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MARIQUITA 


A  Novel 


BY 


JOHN  AYSCOUGH 


NEW  YORK,   CINCINNATI,   CHICAGO 

BENZIGER  BROTHERS 


',  / :  : ; ; 

«c        «     J, ' 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY  BENZIGER  BROTHEKS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  Amelia* 


Tp 
SENORITA   MARIQUITA    GUTIERREZ 

SENORITA, 

It  is,  indeed,  kind  of  you  to  condone,  by 
your  acceptance  of  the  dedication  of  this  small 
book,  the  theft  of  your  name,  perpetrated 
without  your  knowledge,  in  its  title.  And  in 
thanking  you  for  that  acceptance  I  seize 
another  opportunity  of  apologizing  for  that 
theft. 

I  need  not  tell  you  that  in  drawing 
Mariquita's  portrait  I  have  not  been  guilty  of 
the  further  liberty  of  attempting  your  own, 
since  we  have  never  met,  except  on  paper,  and 
you  belong  to  that  numerous  party  of  my 
friends  known  to  me  only  by  welcome  and 
kind  letters.  But  I  hope  there  may  be  a 
nearer  likelihood  of  my  meeting  you  than 
there  now  can  be  of  my  seeing  your  namesake. 

That  you  and  some  others  may  like  her  I 
earnestly  trust:  if  not  it  must  be  the  fault  of 
my  portrait,  drawn  perhaps  with  less  skill  than 
respectful  affection. 

JOHN  AYSCOUGH. 


M63983 


MARIQUITA 


CHAPTER  I. 

A  WHOLE  state,  as  big  as  England 
and  Wales,  and  then  half  as  big 
again,  tilting  smoothly  upward  to- 
wards, but  never  reaching,  the  Great  Di- 
vide: the  tilt  so  gradual  that  miles  of  land 
seem  level;  a  vast  sun-swept,  breeze-swept 
upland  always  high  above  the  level  of  the 
far,  far-off  sea,  here  in  the  western  skirts 
of  the  state  a  mile  above  it.    Its  sky-scape 
always  equal  to  its  landscape,  and  dominant 
-as  the  sky  can  never  be  imagined  in  shut 
lands  of  close  valleys,  where  trees  are  for- 
ever at  war  with  the  air  and  with  the  light. 
Here  light  and  life  seeming  twin  and  in- 
separable:   and    the   wind   itself    but   the 
breathing  of  the  light.    What  is  called,  by 
the  foolish,  a  featureless  country,  that  is 
with  huge,  fine  features,  not  to  be  sought 
for    but    insistent,    regnant,    everywhere: 
space,   tangible   and  palpable,  height   in- 


MABIQUITA 

11     «     <  * 

etr/tably  perceptible  and  recognizable  in  all 
the  unviolated  light,  in  the  winds'  smash, 
and  the  sum's,  in  the  dancing  sense  of  free- 
dom: yet  that  dancing  not  frivolous,  but 
gladly  solemn. 

As  to  little  features  they  are  slurred  (to 
the  slight  glance)  in  the  vast  unity:  but  look 
for  them,  and  they  are  myriad.  The  river- 
banks  hold  them,  between  prairie-lip  and 
water.  The  prairie-waves  hold  them.  Life 
is  innumerably  present,  though  to  the  hasty 
sight  it  seems  primarily  and  distinctly  ab- 
sent. There  are  myriads  of  God's  little  live 
preachers,  doing  each,  from  untold  ages  to 
untold  ages,  the  unnoted  things  set  them  by 
Him  to  do,  as  their  big  brothers  the  sun  and 
the  wind,  the  rain  and  the  soil  do. 

Of  the  greater  beasts  fewer  but  plenty — 
fox,  and  timber-wolf,  and  coyote,  and  still 
to-day  an  antelope  here  and  there. 

Of  men  few.  Their  dwellings  parted  by 
wide  distances.  Their  voices  scarce  heard 
where  no  dwelling  is  at  hand.  But  the 
dwellings,  being  solitary  and  rare,  singu- 
larly home-stamped. 


CHAPTER  II. 

MARIQUITA  came  out  from  the 
homestead,  where  there  was  no- 
body, and  stood  at  its  verge  (where 
the  prairie  began  abruptly)  where  there  was 
nobody.  She  was  twenty  years  old  and  had 
lived  five  of  them  here  on  the  prairie,  since 
her  mother  died,  and  she  had  come  home  to 
be  her  father's  daughter  and  housekeeper, 
and  all  the  servant  he  had.  She  was  hardly 
taller  now,  and  more  slim.  Her  father  did 
not  know  she  was  beautiful — at  first  he  had 
been  too  much  engaged  in  remembering  her 
mother,  who  had  been  very  blonde  and  fair, 
not  at  all  like  her.  Her  own  skin  was  dark; 
and  her  rich  hair  was  dark;  her  grave,  soft, 
deep  eyes  were  dark,  though  hazel-dark, 
not  black-dark:  whereas  her  mother's  hair 
had  been  sunny-golden,  and  her  eyes  bright 
(rather  shallow)  blue,  and  her  skin  all 
white  and  rose. 

Her  mother  had  taught  school,  up   in 


MARIQUITA 

Cheyenne,  in  Wyoming,  and  had  been  of  a 
New  England  family  of  Puritans.  Her 
father's  people  had  come,  long  ago,  from 
Spain,  and  he  himself  had  been  born  near 
the  desert  in  New  Mexico :  his  mother  may 
have  been  Indian — but  a  Catholic,  anyway. 

So,  no  doubt,  was  Jose:  though  he  had 
little  occasion  to  remember  it.  It  was  over 
fifty  miles  to  the  nearest  church  and  he  had 
not  heard  Mass  for  years.  He  had  married 
his  Protestant  wife  without  any  dispensa- 
tion, and  a  judge  had  married  them. 

Nevertheless  when  the  child  came,  he 
had  made  the  mother  understand  she  must 
be  of  his  Church,  and  had  baptized  her 
himself.  When  Mariquita  was  ten  years 
old  he  sent  her  to  the  Loretto  nuns,  out  on 
the  heights  beyond  Denver,  where  she  had 
been  confirmed,  and  made  her  first  Com- 
munion, and  many  subsequent  Communions. 

For  five  years  now  she  had  had  to  "hear 
Mass  her  own  way."  That  is  to  say,  she 
went  out  upon  the  prairie,  and,  in  the  shade 
of  a  tree-clump,  took  her  lonely  place, 
crossed  herself  at  the  threshold  of  the 
shadow,  and  genuflected  towards  where  she 

10 


MARIQUITA 

believed  her  old  school  was,  with  its  chapel, 
and  its  Tabernacle.  Then,  out  of  her  book 
she  followed  the  Ordinary  of  the  Mass,  pro- 
jecting herself  in  mind  and  fancy  into  that 
worshipping  company,  picturing  priest  and 
nuns  and  school-fellows.  At  the  Sanctus 
she  rang  a  sheep-bell,  and  deepened  all  her 
Intention.  At  the  Elevation  she  rang  it 
again,  in  double  triplet,  though  she  could 
elevate  only  her  own  solitary  soul.  At  first 
she  had  easily  pictured  all  her  school-fel- 
lows in  their  remembered  places — they  were 
all  grown  up  and  gone  away  home  now. 
The  old  priest  she  had  known  was  dead,  as 
the  nuns  had  sent  her  word,  and  she  had  to 
picture  a  priest,  unknown,  featureless,  in- 
stead of  him.  The  nuns'  faces  had  somewhat 
dimmed  in  distinctness  too.  But  she  could 
picture  the  large  group  still.  At  the  Com- 
munion she  always  made  a  Spiritual  Com- 
munion of  her  own — that  was  why  she 
always  "heard  her  Mass"  early,  so  as  to  be 
fasting. 

Once  or  twice,  at  long  intervals,  she  had 
been  followed  by  one  of  the  cowboys:  but 
the  first  one  had  seen  her  face  as  she  knelt, 

ii 


MABIQUITA 

and  gone  away,  noiselessly,  with  a  shy,  red 
reverence.  Her  father  had  seen  the  second 
making  obliquely  towards  her  tree-clump, 
had  overtaken  him  and  inquired  grimly  if 
he  would  like  a  leathering.  "When  Mari- 
quita's  at  church,"  said  Jose,  "let  her  be. 
She's  for  none  of  us  then." 

And  they  let  her  be:  and  her  tree-clump 
became  known  as  Mariquita's  Church  by 
all  the  cowboys. 

One  by  one  they  fell  in  love  with  her  (her 
father  grimly  conscious,  but  unremarking) 
and  one  by  one  they  found  nothing  come  of 
it.  Whether  he  would  have  objected  had 
anything  come  of  it  he  did  not  say,  though 
several  had  tried  to  guess. 

To  her  he  never  spoke  of  it,  any  more 
than  to  them:  he  hardly  spoke  to  her  of 
anything  except  the  work — which  she  did 
carefully,  as  if  carelessly.  If  she  had  neg- 
lected it,  or  done  it  badly,  he  would  have 
rebuked  her:  that,  he  considered,  was  par- 
ental duty:  as  she  needed  no  rebuke  he  said 
nothing;  his  ideas  of  paternal  duty  were 
bounded  by  paternal  correction  and  a  cer- 
tain cool  watchfulness.  His  watchfulness 

12 


MARIQUITA 

was  not  intrusive :  he  left  her  chiefly  to  her- 
self, perceiving  her  to  require  no  guidance. 
In  all  her  life  he  never  had  occasion  to 
complain  that  anything  she  did  was  "out  of 
place" — his  notion  of  the  severest  expression 
of  disapproval  a  father  could  be  called  upon 
to  utter. 

It  was,  in  his  opinion,  to  be  taken  for 
granted  that  a  parent  was  entitled  to  the 
affection  of  his  child,  and  that  the  child  was 
entitled  to  the  affection  of  her  father.  He 
neither  displayed  his  affection  nor  wished 
Mariquita  to  display  hers.  Nor  was  there 
in  him  any  sensible  feeling  of  love  for  the 
girl.  Her  mother  he  had  loved,  and  it  was 
a  relief  to  him  that  his  daughter  was  wholly 
unlike  her.  It  would  have  vexed  him  had 
there  been  any  challenging  likeness — would 
have  resented  it  as  a  tacit  claim,  like  a 
rivalry. 

Joaquin  was  lonelier  than  Mariquita.  He 
did  not  like  being  called  "Don  Joaquin"; 
he  preferred  being  known  by  his  surname, 
as  "Mr.  Xeres."  One  of  the  cowboys,  a  very 
ignorant  lad  from  the  East,  had  supposed 
"Wah-Keen"  to  be  a  Chinese  name,  and 

13 


MARIQUITA 

confided  his  idea  to  the  others.  Don  Joaquin 
had  overheard  their  laughter  and  been 
enraged  by  its  cause  when  he  had  learned  it. 

He  had!  not  married  till  he  was  a  little 
over  thirty,  being  already  well  off  by  then, 
and  he  was  therefore  now  past  fifty  on  this 
afternoon  when  Mariquita  came  out  and 
stood  all  alone  where  the  homestead  as  it 
were  rejoined  the  prairie.  At  first  her  long 
gaze,  used  to  the  great  distances,  was  turned 
westward  (and  south  a  little)  towards 
where,  miles  upon  miles  out  of  sight,  lay  the 
Mile  High  City,  and  Loretto,  and  the  Con- 
vent, and  all  that  made  her  one  stock  of 
memories. 

The  prairie  was  as  empty  to  such  a  gaze 
as  so  much  ocean. 

But  the  sun-stare  dazzled  her,  and  she 
turned  eastward;  half  a  mile  from  her,  that 
way,  lay  the  river,  showing  nothing  at  this 
distance :  its  water,  not  filling  at  this  season 
a  fifth  of  the  space  between  banks  was  out 
of  sight:  the  low  scrub  within  its  banks  was 
out  of  sight.  Even  its  lips,  of  precisely  even 
level  on  either  side,  were  not  discernible. 
But  where  she  knew  the  further  lip  was, 


MARIQUITA 

she  saw  two  riders,  a  man  and  a  woman.  A 
moment  after  she  caught  sight  of  them  they 
disappeared — had  ridden  down  into  the 
river-bed.  The  trail  had  guided  them,  and 
they  could  miss  neither  the  way  nor  the  ford. 
Nevertheless  she  walked  towards  where 
they  were — though  her  father  might  pos- 
sibly have  thought  her  doing  so  out  of  place. 


CHAPTER  III. 

UP  over  the  sandy  river-bed  came  the 
two  strangers,  and  Mariquita  stood 
awaiting  them. 

The  woman  might  be  thirty,  and  was,  she 
perceived  (to  whom  a  saddle  was  easier 
than  a  chair)  unused  to  riding.  She  was  a 
pretty  woman,  with  a  sort  of  foolish  amia- 
bility of  manner  that  might  mean  nothing. 
The  man  was  younger — perhaps  by  three 
years,  and  rode  as  if  he  had  always  known 
how  to  do  it,  but  without  being  saddle-bred, 
without  living  chiefly  on  horseback. 

His  companion  was  much  aware  of  his 
being  handsome,  but  Mariquita  did  not 
think  of  that.  She,  however,  liked  him  im- 
mediately— much  better  than  she  liked  the 
lady.  The  lady  was  not,  in  fact,  quite  a 
lady;  but  the  young  man  was  a  gentleman; 
and  perhaps  Mariquita  had  never  known 
one. 

"Is  this,"  inquired  the  blonde  lady — 
pointing,  though  inaccurately,  as  if  to  indi- 


MARIQUITA 

cate  Marquita's  home,  "where  Mr.  Xeres 
lives,  please?" 

She  pronounced  the  X  like  the  x's  in 
Artaxerxes. 

"Certainly.    He  is  my  father." 

"Then  your  mother  is  my  Aunt  Mar- 
garet," said  the  lady  in  the  smart  clothes 
that  looked  so  queer  on  an  equestrian. 

"My  mother  unfortunately  is  dead," 
Mariquita  informed  her,  with  a  simplicity 
that  made  the  wide-open  blue  eyes  open 
wider  still,  and  caused  their  owner  to  decide 
that  the  girl  was  "awfully  Spanish." 

Miss  Sarah  Jackson  assumed  (with  ad- 
mirable readiness)  an  expression  of  pathos. 

"How  very  sadl  I  do  apologize,"  she 
murmured,  as  if  the  decease  of  her  aunt 
were  partly  her  fault. 

The  young  man  was  amused — not  for  the 
first  time — by  his  fellow-traveller:  but  he 
did  not  show  it. 

"You  couldn't  help  it,"  said  Mariquita. 

("How  very  Spanish!"  thought  her 
cousin.) 

"Of  course  you  did  not  know,"  the  girl 
added,  "or  you  would  not  have  said  any- 

17 


thing  to  hurt  me.  And  my  mother's  death 
happened  five  years  ago." 

"Not  really!"  cried  the  deceased  lady's 
niece.  "How  wholly  unexpected  1" 

"It  wasn't  very  sudden,"  Mariquita  ex- 
plained. "She  was  ill  for  three  months." 

"My  father  was  quite  unaware  of  it — 
entirely  so.  He  died,  in  fact,  just  about  that 
time.  And  Aunt  Margaret  and  he  were  (so 
unfortunately!)  hardly  on  terms.  Person- 
ally I  always  (though  a  child)  had  the 
strongest  affection  for  Aunt  Margaret.  I 
took  her  part  about  her  marriage.  Papa's 
own  second  marriage  struck  me  as  less 
defensible." 

"My  father  only  married  once,"  said 
Mariquita;  "he  is  a  widower." 

"Qh,  quite  so !  I  wish  mine  had  remained 
so.  My  stepmother — but  we  all  have  our 
faults,  no  doubt.  We  did  not  live  agreeably 
after  her  third  marriage — "  (Mariquita 
was  getting  giddy,  and  so,  perhaps,  was  Miss 
Jackson's  fellow-traveller.) 

"I  could  not,  in  fact,  live,"  thatl  lady 
serenely  continued,  with  a  smile  of  lingering 
sweetness,  "and  finally  we  differed  com- 


MARIQUITA 

pletely.  (Not  noisily,  on  my  part,  nor 
roughly  but  irrevocably.)  Hence  my  re- 
solve to  turn  to  Aunt  Margaret,  and  my 
presence  here — blood  is  thicker  than  water, 
when  you  come  to  think  of  it." 

"I  met  Miss  Jackson  at ,"  her  fel- 
low-traveller explained,  "and  we  made 
acquaintance — " 

"Introduced  by  Mrs.  Plosher,"  Miss 
Jackson  put  in  again  with  singular  sweet- 
ness. "Mrs.  Plosher's  boarding-house  was 
recommended  to  me  by  two  ministers.  Mr. 
Gore  was  likewise  her  guest,  and  coming,  as 
she  was  aware,  to  your  father's." 

Don  Joaquin,  besides  the  regular  cow- 
boys, had  from  time  to  time  taken  a  sort  of 
pupil  or  apprentice,  who  paid  instead  of 
being  paid.  Mariquita  had  not  been  in- 
formed that  this  Mr.  Gore  was  expected. 

"So,"  Mr.  Gore  added,  "I  begged  Miss 
Jackson  to  use  one  of  my  horses,  and  I  have 
been  her  escort." 

"So  coincidental!"  observed  that  lady, 
shaking  her  head  slightly.  "Though  really 
— now  I  find  my  aunt  no  longer  presiding 
here — I  really " 

19 


CHAPTER  IV. 

DON  JOAQiUIN  expressed  no  sur- 
prise at  Mr.  Gore's  arrival,  and  no 
rapture  at  that  of  Miss  Jackson. 
But  he  appeared  to  take  it  for  granted  both 
would  remain — as  they  did. 

He  saw  more  of  the  young  man  than  of 
the  young  woman,  which  seemed  to  Mari- 
quita  to  account  for4  his  preferring  the  latter. 
She  had  to  see  more  of  the  lady.  Miss  Jack- 
son was  undeniably  pretty,  and  instantly 
recognized  as  such  by  the  cowboys :  but  she 
"kept  her  distance,"  and  largely  ignored 
their  presence — a  fact  not  unobserved  by 
Don  Joaquin,  who  inwardly  commended 
her  prudence.  Of  Mr.  Gore  she  took  more 
notice,  as  was  natural,  owing  to  their  pre- 
vious acquaintance.  She  spoke  of  him,  how- 
ever, to  her  host,  as  a  lad,  and  hinted  that 
at  her  age,  lads  were  tedious ;  while  frequent 
in  allusion  to  a  certain  Eastern  friend  of 
hers  (Mr.  Bluck,  a  man  of  large  means  and 

20 


MABIQUITA 

great  capacity)  whose  married  daughter 
was  her  closest  acquaintance. 

"Carolina  was  older  than  me  at  school," 
she  would  admit,  "but  she  was  more  to  my 
taste  than  those  of  my  own  age.  Maturity 
wins  me.  Youth  is  so  raw!" 

"What  you  call  underdone,"  suggested 
Don  Joaquin,  who  had  talked  English  for 
forty  years,  and  translated  it  still,  in  his 
mind,  into  Spanish. 

"Just  that,"  Sara'h  agreed.     "You  grasp 


me.' 


He  didn't  then,  though  he  would  sooner 
or  later,  thought  the  cowboys. 

Miss  Jackson,  then,  ignored  the  cowboys, 
and  gave  all  the  time  she  could  spare  from 
herself  to  Mariquita.  When  not  with 
Mariquita  she  was  sewing,  being  an  inde- 
fatigable dressmaker.  She  called  it  her 
"studies." 

"It  is  essential  (out  here  in  the  wilder- 
ness) that  I  should  not  neglect  my  studies, 
and  run  to  seed,"  she  would  say,  as  she  smil- 
ingly retreated  into  her  bedroom,  where 
there  were  no  books. 

Mariquita  would  not  have  been  sorry  had 

21 


MARIQUITA 

she  "studied"  more.  Sarah  did  not  fit  into 
her  old  habits  of  life,  and  when  they  were 
together  Mariquita  felt  lonelier  than  she 
had  ever  done  before.  Indoors  she  did  not 
find  the  young  woman  so  incongruous — but 
iwlien  they  were  out  on  the  prairie  together 
the  elder  girl  seemed  somehow  altogether 
impossible  to  reconcile  with  it. 

"One  might  sketch,"  Miss  Jackson  would 
observe.  "One  ought  to  keep  up  one's 
sketching:  I  feel  it  to  be  a  duty — don't  you?" 

"No.  I  can't  sketch.  It  can't  be  a  duty 
in  my  case." 

"Ah,  but  in  mine!  I  know  I  ought.  But 
there's  no  feature."  And  she  slowly  waved 
her  parasol  round  the  horizon  as  though 
defying  a  "feature"  to  supervene  from  any 
point  of  the  compass. 

Though  she  despised  her  present  neigh- 
borhood, Sarah  never  hinted  at  any  inten- 
tion of  leaving  it:  and  it  became  apparent 
that  her  host  would  not  have  liked  her  to  go 
away.  That  her  presence  was  a  great  thing 
for  Mariquita  it  suited  him  to  assume,  but 
he  saw  no  necessity  for  discussing  the  mat- 
ter, nor  ascertaining  what  might  in  fact  be 

22 


MARIQUITA 

his  daughter's  opinion. 

"I  think,"  he  said  instead,  "it  will  be 
better  we  call  your  cousin  'Sarella'.  It  is 
her  name  Sarah  and  Ella.  'Sarella'  sounds 
more  fitting." 

So  he  and  Mariquita  thenceforth  called 
her  "Sarella." 


CHAPTER  V. 

DON  JOAQUIN  never  thought  much 
of  Robert  Gore;  he  failed,  from  the 
first,  to  "take  to  him."  It  had  not 
delighted  him  that  "Sarella"  should  arrive 
under  his  escort,  though  how  she  could 
have  made  her  way  up  from  Maxwell  with- 
out him,  he  did  not  trouble  to  discuss  with 
himself.  At  first  he  had  thought  it  almost 
inevitable  that  the  young  man  should  make 
those  services  of  his  a  claim  to  special  in- 
timacy with  the  lady  to  whom  he  had  acci- 
dentally been  useful.  As  it  became  apparent 
that  Gore  made  no  such  claim,  and  was  not 
peculiarly  inclined  to  intimacy  with  his  late 
fellow-traveller,  Don  Joaquin  was  half 
disposed  to  take  umbrage,  as  though  the 
young  man  were  in  a  manner  slighting  Miss 
Jackson — his  own  wife's  niece. 

As  there  were  only  two  women  about  the 
place,  indifference  to  one  of  them  (and  that 
one,  in  Don  Joaquin's  opinion,  by  far  the 

24 


MARIQUITA 

more  attractive)  might  be  accounted  for  by 
some  special  inclination  towards  the  other. 
Was  Gore  equally  indifferent  to  Mariquita? 

Now,  at  present,  Mariquita's  father  was 
not  ready  to  approve  any  advances  from  the 
stranger  in  that  direction.  He  did  not  feel 
he  knew  enough  about  him.  That  he  was 
sufficiently  well  off,  he  thought  probable; 
but  in  that  matter  he  must  have  certainty. 
And  besides,  he  thought  Gore  was  sure  to 
be  a  Protestant.  Now  he  had  married  a 
Protestant  himself:  and  that  his  wife  had 
been  taken  from  him  in  her  youth  had  been, 
he  had  silently  decided,  Heaven's  retribu- 
tion. Besides,  a  girl  was  different.  A  man 
might  do  things  she  might  not.  He  had  con- 
sulted his  own  will  and  pleasure  only;  but 
Mariquita  was  not  therefore  free  to  consult 
hers.  A  Catholic  girl  should  give  herself 
only  to  a  Catholic  man. 

That  Mariquita  and  Gore  saw  little  of 
each  other  he  was  pretty  sure,  but  it  was 
not  possible  they  should  see  nothing.  And 
it  soon  became  his  opinion  that,  without 
much  personal  intercourse,  they  were  inter- 
ested in  each  other. 

25 


MARIQUITA 

Mariquita  listened  (without  often  look- 
ing at  him)  when  Gore  talked,  in  a  manner 
he  had  never  yet  observed  in  her.  Gore's 
extreme  deference  towards  the  girl,  his  sin- 
gular and  almost  aloof  courtesy  was,  the  old 
man  conceived,  not  only  breeding  and  good 
manners,  but  the  sign  of  some  special  way  in 
which  she  had  impressed  him;  as  if  he  had, 
at  sight,  perceived  in  her  something  unre- 
vealed  to  her  father  himself.  In  this,  as  in 
most  things,  Don  Joaquin  was  correct  in  his 
surmise.  He  was  shrewd  in  surmise  to  the 
point  almost  of  cleverness,  though  by  no 
means  an  infallible  judge  of  character.  It 
did  not,  however,  occur  to  him  that  the 
young  stranger  was  right  in  this  fancied  per- 
ception, that  in  Mariquita  there  was  some- 
thing higher  and  finer  than  anything  divined 
by  her  father,  who  had  never  gone  beyond 
admitting  that,  so  far,  he  had  perceived  in 
her  nothing  out  of  place. 

If  anything  out  of  place  should  now 
appear  he  would  speak;  meanwhile  he 
remained,  as  his  habit  was,  silent  and 
watchful;  not  rendered  more  appreciative 
of  his  daughter  by  the  stranger's  apprecia- 

26 


MARIQUITA 

tion,  and  not  inclined  by  that  appreciation 
more  favorably  to  the  stranger  himself. 

That  Gore  was  not  warmly  welcomed  by 
the  cowboys  neither  surprised  nor  troubled 
him.  There  were  no  quarrels,  and  that  was 
enough.  He  did  not  expect  them  to  be 
delighted  by  the  advent  of  a  foreigner  in  a 
position  not  identical  with  their  own.  What 
they  did  for  pay,  he  paid  for  being  taught 
to  do — that  was  the  theory,  though  in  fact 
Gore  did  not  seem  to  need  much  teaching. 
Some,  of  course,  he  did  need:  prairie-lore 
he  could  not  know,  however  practised  he 
might  be  as  a  mere  horseman.  Don  Joaquin 
was  chiefly  a  horse-raiser  and  dealer,  though 
he  dealt  also  in  cattle  and  even  in  sheep.  By 
this  time  he  had  the  repute  of  being 
wealthy. 


27 


CHAPTER  VI. 

IT  was  true  that  the  actual  intercourse 
between    Mariquita    and   her    father's 
apprentice  or  pupil  was  much  less  fre- 
quent or  close  than  might  be  imagined  by 
anyone  strange  to  the  way  of  life  of  which 
they  formed  two  units. 

At  meals  they  sat  at  the  same  table,  but 
during  the  greater  part  of  every  day  he  was 
out  upon  the  range,  and  she  at  home,  within 
the  homestead,  or  near  it.  Yet  it  was  also 
true  that  between  them  there  was  something 
not  existing  between  either  and  any  other 
person:  a  friendship  mostly  silent,  an  in- 
terest not  the  less  real  or  strong  because  of 
the  silence.  To  Gore  she  was  a  study,  of 
profounder  interest  than  any  book  he  knew. 
To  make  a  counter-study  of  him  would  have 
been  alien  from  Mariquita's  nature  and 
character;  but  his  presence,  which  she  did 
not  ponder,  or  consider,  as  he  did  hers, 
brought  something  into  her  life.  Perhaps  it 

28 


MARIQUITA 

chiefly  made  her  less  lonely  by  revealing  to 
her  how  lonely  she  had  been.  Of  his  beauty 
she  never  thought — never  till  the  end.  Of 
hers  he  thought  much  less  as  he  became 
more  and  more  absorbed  in  herself — though 
its  fineness  was  always  more  and  more 
clearly  perceived  by  him. 

On  that  first  afternoon,  when  he  had  first 
seen  her,  it  had  instantly  struck  him  as 
possessing  a  quality  of  rarity,  elusive  and 
never  to  be  defined.  Miss  Jackson's  almost 
gorgeous  prettiness,  her  brilliant  coloring, 
her  attractive  shapeliness,  had  been  hope- 
lessly and  finally  vulgarized  by  the  contrast 
— as  the  two  young  women  stood  on  the 
level  lip  of  the  river-course  in  the  unspar- 
ing, unflattering  light. 

That  Miss  Jackson  promptly  decided  that 
Mariquita  was  stupid,  he  had  seen  plainly; 
and  he  had  not  had  the  consolation  of  know- 
ing that  she  was  stupid  herself.  She  was,  he 
knew,  wise  enough  in  her  generation,  and  by 
no  means  vacant  of  will  or  purpose.  But 
she  was,  he  saw,  stupid  in  thinking  her 
young  hostess  so.  Slow,  in  some  senses, 
Mariquita  might  be;  not  swift  of  impres- 

29 


MARIQUITA 

sion,  though  tenacious  of  impression  re- 
ceived, nor  willing  to  be  quick  in  jumping 
to  shrewd  (unflattering)  conclusion,  yet 
likely  to  stick  hard  to  an  even  harsh  conclu- 
sion once  formed. 

These,  however,  were  slight  matters. 
What  was  not  slight  was  the  sense  she  gave 
him  of  nobility:  her  simplicity  itself  aoble, 
her  complete  acquiescence  in  her  own  com- 
plete ignorance  of  experience — her  innate, 
unargued  conviction  of  the  little  conse- 
quence of  much,  often  highly  desired,  ex- 
perience. 

Of  the  world  she  knew  nothing,  socially, 
geographically  even.  Of  women  her  knowl- 
edge was  (as  soon  he  discovered)  a  mere 
memory,  a  memory  of  a  group  of  nuns — for 
her  other  companions  at  the  Convent  had 
been  children.  Of  men  she  knew  only  her 
father  and  his  cowboys.  And  no  one,  he 
perceived,  knew  her. 

But  Gore  did  not  believe  her  mind  vacant. 
That  rare  quality  could  not  have  been  in 
her  beauty  if  it  had  been  empty.     Yet- 
there  was  something  greater  than  her  mind 
behind  her  face.     The  shape  of  that  per- 

30 


MARIQUIT^S 

ception  had  entered  instantly  into  his  own 
mind;  and  the  perception  grew  and  deep- 
ened daily,  with  every  time  he  was  in  her 
presence,  with  every  recollection  of  her  in 
absence. 

Her  mind  might  be  a  garden  unsown- 
But  behind  her  face  was  the  light  of  a  lamp 
not  waiting  to  be  lit,  but  already  lighted  (he 
surmised)  at  the  first  coming  of  conscious 
existence,  and  burning  steadily  ever  since. 
Whose  hand  had  lighted  it  he  did  not  know 
yet,  though  he  knew  that  the  lamp,  shining 
behind  her  face,  her  mere  beauty,  was  her 
soul.  Her  father  was  not  mistaken  in  his 
notion  that  the  young  man  regarded  the  girl 
to  whom  he  addressed  so  little  of  direct 
speech,  with  a  veneration  that  disconcerted 
Don  Joaquin  and  was  condemned  by  him 
as  out  of  place.  Not  that  he,  of  course, 
found  fault  with  respect:  absence  of  that  he 
would  grimly  have  resented;  but  a  culte, 
like  Gore's,  a  reverence  literally  devout, 
seemed  to  the  old  half-Indian  Latin,  high- 
f alutin,  unreal :  and  Don  Joaquin  abhorred 
unrealities. 

Probably  the  young  man  condemned  the 


MARIQUITA 

old  as  hide-bound  in  obtuseness  of  percep- 
tion in  reference  to  his  daughter.  As  a  jewel 
of  gold  in  a  swine's  snout  she  may  well  have 
seemed  to  him.  If  so,  some  inkling  of  the 
fact  would  surely  penetrate  the  old  horse- 
raiser's  inner,  taciturn,  but  acutely  watchful 
consciousness.  His  hide  was  by  no  means 
too  thick  for  that.  And,  if  so  again,  that 
perception  would  not  enhance  his  apprecia- 
tion of  the  critic. 

Elderly  fathers  are  not  universally  more 
flattered  by  an  exalted  valuation  of  their 
daughters  than  by  an  admiring  estimation 
of  themselves. 

To  himself,  indeed,  Gore  was  perfectly 
respectful.  And  he  had  to  admit  that  the 
stranger  learned  his  work  well  and  did  it 
well — better  than  the  cowboys  whom  Don 
Joaquin  was  not  given  to  indulge  in  neglect 
or  slackness. 

He  had  a  notion  that  the  cowboys  con- 
sidered Gore  too  respectable — as  to  which 
their  master  held  his  judgment  in  suspense. 
In  a  possible  son-in-law  respectability, 
unless  quite  suspiciously  excessive,  would 
not  be  much  "out  of  place" — not  that  Don 


MABIQUITA 

Joaquin  admitted  more  than  the  bare  possi- 
bility, till  he  had  fuller  certainty  as  to  the 
stranger's  circumstances  and  antecedents, 
what  he  called  his  "conditions."  Given 
satisfactory  conditions,  Mariquita's  father 
began  to  be  conscious  that  Gore  as  a  pos- 
sible son-in-law  might  simplify  a  certain 
course  of  his  own. 

For  Sarella  continued  steadily  to  com- 
mend herself  to  his  ideas.  He  held  her  to 
be  beautiful  in  the  extreme,  and  her  pru- 
dence he  secretly  acclaimed  as  admirable. 
That  she  was  penniless  he  was  quite  aware, 
and  he  had  a  constant,  sincere  affection  for 
money;  but,  unless  penniless,  such  a  lovely 
creature  could  hardly  have  been  found  on 
the  prairie,  or  be  expected  to  remain  there; 
an  elderly  rich  husband,  he  considered, 
would  have  much  more  hold  on  a  young 
and  lovely  wife  if  she  were  penniless. 

That  the  young  woman  had  expensive 
tastes  he  did  not  suppose,  and  he  had  great 
and  not  ungrounded  confidence  in  his  own 
power  of  repression  of  any  taste  not  to  his 
mind,  should  any  supervene. 

Don  Joaquin  had  two  reasons  for  survey- 

33 


MARIQUITA 

ing  with  conditional  approval  the  idea  of 
marrying  Sarella — when  he  should  have 
made  up  his  mind,  which  he  had  not  yet 
done.  One  was  to  please  himself :  the  other 
was  in  order  that  he  might  have  a  son.  Mari- 
quita's  sex  had  always  been  against  her.  Be- 
fore her  arrival  he  had  decided  that  his 
child  must  be  a  boy,  and  her  being  a  girl 
was  out  of  place.  He  disliked  making 
money  for  some  other  man's  wife. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

JACK  did  not  like  Sarella,  and  so  it  was 
fortunate  for  that  young  person  that 
Jack's  opinion  was  of  no  sort  of  conse- 
quence. He  had  been  longer  on  the  range 
than  anyone  there  except  Don  Joaquin,  and 
he  did  much  that  would,  if  he  had  been  a 
different  sort  of  man,  have  entitled  him  to 
consider  himself  foreman.  But  he  received 
smaller  wages  than  anyone  and  never 
dreamt  of  being  foreman.  He  was  believed 
never  to  have  had  any  other  name  but  Jack, 
and  was  known  never  to  have  had  but  one 
suit  of  clothes,  and  his  face  and  hands  were 
much  shabbier  than  his  clothes,  owing  to  a 
calendar  of  personal  accidents.  "That  hap- 
pened," he  would  say,  "  in  the  year  the  red 
bull  horned  my  eye  out,"  or  "I  mind — 'twas 
in  the  Jenoorey  that  my  leg  got  smashed 
thro'  Black  Peter  rollin'  on  me.  .  .  ."  He 
had  been  struck  in  the  jaw  by  a  splinter  from 
a  tree  that  had  itself  been  struck  by  light- 

35 


MARIQUITA 

ning,  and  the  scar  he  called  his  "June 
mark."  A  missing  finger  of  his  right  hand 
he  called  his  Xmas  mark  because  it  was  on 
Christmas  Day  that  the  gun  burst  which 
shot  it  off.  These,  and  many  other  scars  and 
blemishes,  would  have  marred  the  beauty  of 
an  Antinous,  and  Jack  had  always  been 
ugly. 

But,  shabby  as  he  was,  he  was  marvel- 
lously clean,  and  Mariquita  was  very  fond 
of  him.  His  crooked  body  held  a  straight 
heart,  loyal  and  kind,  and  a  child's  mind 
could  not  be  cleaner.  No  human  being  sus- 
pected that  Jack  hated  his  master,  whom  he 
served  faithfully  and  with  stingily  rewarded 
toil:  and  he  hated  him  not  because  he  was 
stingy  to  himself,  but  because  Jack  adored 
Mariquita,  and  accused  her  father  of  indif- 
ference to  her.  He  was  angry  with  him  for 
leaving  her  alone  to  do  all  the  work,  and 
angry  because  nothing  was  ever  done  for 
her,  and  no  thought  taken  of  her. 

When  Sarella  and  Gore  came,  Jack 
hoped  that  the  young  man  would  marry 
Mariquita  and  take  her  away — though  he 
would  be  left  desolate.  Thus  Mariquita 

36 


MARIQUITA 

would  be  happy — and  her  father  be  pun- 
ished, for  Jack  clearly  perceived  that  Don 
Joaquin  did  not  care  for  Gore,  and  he  did 
not  perceive  that  Mariquita's  departure 
might  be  convenient  to  her  father.  But  Jack 
could  not  see  that  Gore  himself  did  much  to 
carry  out  that  marriage  scheme.  That  the 
young  man  set  a  far  higher  value  on  Mari- 
quita  than  her  father  had  ever  done,  Jack 
did  promptly  understand;  but  he  could  per- 
ceive no  advances  and  watched  him  with 
impatience. 

As  for  Sarella,  Jack  was  jealous  of  her 
importance:  jealous  that  the  old  man  made 
more  of  his  wife's  niece  than  of  his  own 
daughter;  jealous  that  she  had  much  less  to 
do,  and  specially  jealous  that  she  had  much 
smarter  clothes.  Jack  could  not  see  Sarella's 
beauty;  had  he  possessed  a  looking-glass  it 
might  have  been  supposed  to  have  dislo- 
cated his  eye  for  beauty,  but  he  possessed 
none — and  he  thought  Mariquita  as  beau- 
tiful as  the  dawn  on  the  prairie. 

To  do  her  justice,  Sarella  was  civil  to  the 
battered  old  fellow,  but  he  didn't  want  her 
civility,  and  was  ungrateful  for  it.  Yet  her 

37 


MARIQUITA 

civility  was  to  prove  useful.  Jack  lived  in  a 
shed  at  the  end  of  the  stables,  where  he  ate 
and  slept,  and  mended  his  clothes  sitting  up 
in  bed,  and  wearing  (then  only)  a  large  pair 
of  spectacles,  though  half  a  pair  would  have 
been  enough.  He  cooked  his  own  food, 
though  Mariquita  would  have  cooked  it  for 
him  if  he  would  have  let  her. 

Sarella  loved  good  eating,  and  on  her 
coming  it  irritated  her  to  see  so  much 
excellent  food  "made  so  little  of."  Presently 
she  gave  specimens  of  her  own  superior 
science,  and  Don  Joaquin  approved,  as  did 
the  cowboys. 

"Jack,"  she  said  to  him  one  day,  "do  you 
ever  eat  anything  but  stew  from  year's  end 
to  year's  end?" 

"I  eats  bread,  too,  and  likewise  corn  por- 
ridge," Jack  replied  coldly. 

"I  could  tell  you  how  to  make  more  of 
your  meat — I  should  think  you'd  sicken  of 
stew  everlastingly." 

"There's  worse  than  stew,"  he  suggested. 

"I  don't  know  what's  worse,  then,"  the 
young  lady  retorted,  wrinkling  her  very 
pretty  nose. 

38 


MARIQUITA 

"None.  That's  worse,"  said  Jack, 
triumphantly. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  Sarella  observed 
thoughtfully,  "as  if  you're  growing  a  bit 
oldish  to  do  for  yourself,  and  have  no  one  to 
do  anything  for  you.  An  elderly  man  wants 
a  woman  to  keep  him  comfortable." 

Jack  snorted,  but  Sarella,  undefeated, 
proceeded  to  put  the  case  of  his  being  ill. 
(Who  would  nurse  him? 

"1111  Fve  too  much  to  do  for  sech  idle- 
ness. The  Boss'd  stare  if  I  laid  out  to 
get  ill." 

"Illness,"  Sarella  remarked  piously, 
"comes  from  Above,  and  may  come  any  day. 
Haven't  you  anyone  belonging  to  you,  Jack? 
No  sister,  no  niece;  you  never  were  married, 
I  suppose,  so  I  don't  mention  a  daughter." 

"I  'was  married,  though,"  Jack  explained, 
much  delighted,  "and  had  a  daughter,  too." 

"You  quite  surprise  mel"  cried  Sarella, 
"quite!" 

"She  didn't  marry  me  for  my  looks,  my 
wife  didn't,"  chuckled  Jack.  "Nor  yet  for 
my  money." 

"Out  of  esteem?"  suggested  Sarella. 

39 


MARIQUITA 

"Can't  say,  I'm  sure.  I  never  heerd  her 
mention  it.  Anyway,  it  didn't  last — " 

"The  esteem?" 

"No.  The  firm.  She  died — when  Ginger 
was  born.  Since  which  I  have  remained  a 
bachelord." 

"By  Ginger  you  mean  your  daughter?" 

"That's  what  they  called  her.  Her  aunt 
took  her,  and  she  took  the  smallpox.  But 
she  didn't  die  of  it.  She's  alive  now." 

"Married,  I  daresay?" 

"No.  Single.  She's  as  like  me  as  you're 
not,"  Jack  explained  summarily. 

Sarella  laughed. 

"A  good  girl,  though,  I'll  be  bound,"  she 
hinted  amiably. 

"She's  never  mentioned  the  contrary — in 
her  letters." 

"Oh,  she  writes  I  I'm  glad  she  writes." 

"Thank  you,  Miss  Sarella.  She  writes 
most  Christmasses.  And  she  wrote  lately, 
tho'  it's  not  Christmas." 

"Not  ill,  I  hope?" 

"111!  She's  an  industrious  girl  with  plenty 
o'  sense  .  .  .  but  her  aunt's  dead,  and 

40 


MARIQUITA 

she  thinks  o'  taking  a  place  in  a  boarding- 
house." 

"Jack,"  said  Sarella,  after  a  brief  but 
pregnant  pause  of  consideration,  "bring  her 
up  here." 

Jack  regarded  her  with  a  stare  of  undis- 
guised amazement. 

"Why  not?"  Sarella  persisted.  "It  would 
be  better  for  you." 

"What's  that  to  do  with  it?" 

"And  better  for  Miss  Mariquita.  It's 
too  much  for  Miss  Mariquita — all  the  work 
she  has  to  do." 

"That's  true  anyway." 

"Of  course  it's  true.  Anyone  can  see 
that."  (That  Sarella  saw  it,  considerably 
surprised  Jack,  and  provided  matter  for 
some  close  consideration  subsequently.) 

"Look  here,  Jack,"  she  went  on,  "I'll  tell 
you  what.  You  go  to  Mr.  Xeres  and  say 
you'd  like  your  daughter  to  come  and  work 
for  you  .  .  ." 

"And  he'd  tell  me  to  go  and  be  damned." 
"But  you'd  not  go.     And  he  wouldn't 
want  you  to  go.    And  I'll  speak  to  him." 


Jack  stared  again.  He  hardly  realized 
yet  how  much  steadily  growing  confidence 
in  her  influence  with  "the  Boss"  Sarella  felt. 
He  made  no  promise  to  speak  to  him :  but 
said  "he'd  sleep  on  it." 

With  that  sleep  came  a  certain  ray  of 
comprehension.  Miss  Sarella  was  not  think- 
ing entirely  of  him  and  his  loneliness,  nor 
entirely  of  Miss  Mariquita.  He  believed 
that  she  really  expected  the  Boss  would 
marry  her  (as  all  the  cowboys  had  believed 
for  some  weeks)  and  he  perceived,  with 
some  involuntary  admiration  of  her  shrewd- 
ness, that  she  had  no  idea  of  being  left,  if 
Miss  Mariquta  should  marry  and  go  away, 
to  do  all  the  work  as  she  had  done.  Once 
arrived  at  this  perception  of  the  situation, 
Jack  went  ahead  confident  of  Sarella's 
quietly  persistent  help.  He  had  not  the 
least  dread  of  rough  language.  He  had  no 
sensitive  dread  of  displeasing  his  master. 
He  would  like  to  have  Ginger  up  at  the 
range  especially  as  Ginger's  coming  would 
take  much  of  the  work  off  Miss  Mariquita's 
hands.  He  even  made  Don  Joaquin  suspect 
that  if  Ginger  were  not  allowed  to  come 

42 


MARIQUITA 

he,  Jack,  would  go,  and  make  a  home  for 
her  down  in  Maxwell. 

It  did  not  suit  Don  Joaquin  to  lose  Jack, 
and  it  suited  him  very  well  to  listen  to 
Sarella. 

So  Ginger  came,  and  proved,  as  all  the 
cowboys  agreed,  a  good  sort,  though  quite 
as  ugly  as  her  father. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

]\  yT  ARIQUITA,"  said  her  father 
\/ 1  one  day,  "does  Sarella  ever  talk 
to  you  about  religion?" 

Anything  like  what  could  be  called  a  con- 
versation was  so  rare  between  them  that  the 
girl  was  surprised,  and  it  surprised  her  still 
more  that  he  should  choose  that  particular 
subject. 

"She  asked  me  if  we  were  Catholics." 

"Of  course  we  are  Catholics.  You  said 
so?" 

"I  didn't  say  'of  course,'  but  I  said  we 
were.  She  then  asked  if  my  mother  had 
become  one — on  her  marriage  or  after- 
wards." 

Don  Joaquin  heard  this  with  evident  in- 
terest, and,  as  Mariquita  thought,  with 
some  satisfaction. 

"What  did  you  say?"  he  inquired. 

Mariquita  glanced  at  him  as  if  puzzled. 

44 


MARIQUITA 

"I  told  her  that  my  mother  never  became  a 
Catholic,"  she  answered. 
"That  pleased  her?" 

"I  don't  know.  She  did  not  seem  pleased 
or  displeased." 

"She  did  not  seem  glad  that  I  had  not 
insisted  that  my  wife  should  be  Catholic?" 

"She  may  have  been  glad — I  did  not  see 
that  she  was." 

"You  did  not  think  she  would  have  been 
angry  if  she  had  heard  I  had  insisted  that 
my  wife  should  be  Catholic?" 

"No;  that  did  not  appear  to  me." 

So  far  as  Mariquita's  information  went, 
it  satisfied  her  father.  Only  it  was  a  pity 
Sarella  should  know  that  her  aunt  had  not 
adopted  his  own  religion. 

Mariquita  had  not  probed  the  motive  of 
his  questions.  Direct  enough  of  impression, 
she  was  not  penetrating  nor  astute  in  fol- 
lowing the  hidden  working  of  other  persons' 
minds. 

"It  is,"  he  remarked,  "a  good  thing  Sa- 
rella came  here." 

"Poor  thing!    She  had  no  home  left — it 

45 


MARIQUITA 

was  natural  she  should  think  of  coming  to 
her  aunt." 

"Yes,  quite  natural.  And  good  for  you 
also." 

"I  was  not  lonely  before — " 

"But  if  I  had  died?" 

Mariquita  had  never  thought  of  his  dying; 
he  was  as  strong  as  a  tree,  and  she  could  not 
picture  the  range  without  him. 

"I  never  thought  of  you  dying.  You  are 
not  old,  father." 

"Old,  no !  But  suppose  I  had  died,  all  the 
same — before  Sarella  came — what  would 
you  have  done?" 

"I  never  thought  of  it." 

"No.  That  would  have  been  out  of  place. 
But  you  could  not  have  lived  here,  one  girl 
all  alone  among  all  the  men." 

"No,  of  course." 

"Now  you  have  Sarella.  It  would  be  dif- 
ferent." 

"Oh,  yes;  if  she  wished  to  go  on  living 
here—" 

"If  she  went  away  to  live  somewhere  else 
you  could  go  with  her." 

Mariquita  did  not  see  that  that  would  be 


MARIQUITA 

necessary,  but  she  did  not  say  so.  She  was 
not  aware  that  her  father  was  endeavoring 
to  habituate  her  mind  to  the  permanence  of 
Sarella's  connection  with  herself. 

"Of  course,"  he  said  casually,  "you  might 
marry — at  any  time." 

"I  never  thought  of  that,"  the  girl 
answered,  and  he  saw  clearly  that  she  never 
had  thought  of  it.  Gore  would,  he  perceived, 
not  have  her  for  the  asking;  might  have  a 
great  deal  of  asking  to  do,  and  might  not 
succeed  after  much  asking. 

It  was  not  so  clear  to  him  that  Gore  him- 
self was  as  well  aware  of  that  as  he  was. 

That  she  had  never  had  any  thoughts  of 
marriage  pleased  him,  partly  because  he 
would  not  have  liked  Gore  to  get  what  he 
wanted,  so  easily,  and  partly  because  it  satis- 
fied his  notion  of  dignity  in  her — his  daugh- 
ter. It  was  really  his  own  dignity  in  her  he 
was  thinking  of. 

All  the  same,  now  that  he  knew  she  was 
not  thinking  of  marrying  the  handsome 
stranger,  he  felt  more  clearly  that  (if  Gore's 
"conditions"  were  suitable)  the  marriage 
might  suit  him — Don  Joaquin. 

47 


MARIQUITA 

"There  are,"  he  observed  sententiously, 
"only  two  ways  for  women." 

"Two  ways?" 

"Marriage  is  the  usual  way.  If  God  had 
wanted  only  nuns,  He  would  have  created 
women  only.  That  one  sees.  Whereas 
there  are  women  and  men — so  marriage  is 
the  ordinary  way  for  women;  and  if  God 
chooses  there  should  be  more  married 
women  than  nuns,  it  shows  He  doesn't  want 
too  many  nuns." 

The  argument  was  new  to  Mariquita: 
she  was  little  used  to  hear  any  abstract  dis- 
cussion from  her  father. 

"You  have  thought  of  it,"  she  said;  "I 
have  never  thought  of  all  that." 

"There  was  no  necessity.  It  might  have 
been  out  of  place.  All  the  same  it  is  true 
what  I  say." 

"But  I  think  it  is  also  true  that  to  be  a 
nun  is  the  best  way  for  some  women." 

"Naturally.     For  some." 

Mariquita  had  no  sort  of  desire  to  argue 
with  him,  or  anyone;  arguments  were,  she 
thought,  almost  quarrels. 

He,  on  his  side,  was  again  thinking  of 


MARIQUITA 

Sarella,  and  left  the  nuns  alone. 

"It  would,"  he  said,  "be  a  good  thing  if 
Sarella  should  become  Catholic.  If  she 
talks  about  religion  you  can  explain  to  her 
that  there  can  be  only  one  that  is  true." 

Mariquita  did  not  understand  (though 
everyone  else  did)  that  her  father  wished  to 
marry  Sarella,  and,  of  course,  she  could  not 
know  that  he  was  resolved  against  provok- 
ing further  punishment  by  marrying  a 
Protestant. 

"If  I  can,"  she  said,  slowly,  "I  will  try 
to  help  her  to  see  that.  She  does  not  talk 
much  about  such  things.  And  she  is  much 
older  than  I  am — " 

"Oh,  yes;  quite  very  much  older,"  he 
agreed  earnestly,  though  in  fact  Sarella 
appeared  simply  a  girl  to  him. 

"And  it  would  not  do  good  for  me  to  seem 
interfering." 

"But,"  he  agreed  with  some  adroitness, 
"though  a  blind  person  were  older  than  you 
(who  can  see)  you  would  show  her  the 
way?" 

Mariquita  was  not,  at  any  rate,  so  blind 
as  to  be  unable  to  see  that  her  father  was 

49 


MARIQUITA 

strongly  desirous  that  Sarella  should  be  a 
Catholic.  It  had  surprised  her,  as  she  had 
no  recollection  of  his  having  troubled  him- 
self concerning  her  own  mother,  his  beloved 
wife,  not  having  been  one.  Of  course,  she 
was  glad,  thinking  it  meant  a  deeper  interest 
in  religion  on  his  own  part. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

BETWEEN  Mariquita  and  her  father 
there  was  little  in  common  except  a 
partial  community  of  race;  in  nature 
and  character  they  were  entirely  different. 
In  her  the  Indian  strain  had  only  physical 
expression,  and  that  only  in  the  slim  supple- 
ness of  her  frame;  she  would  never  grow 
stout  as  do  so  many  Spanish  women. 

Whereas  in  her  father  the  Indian  blood 
had  effects  of  character.  He  was  not  merely 
subtle  like  a  Latin,  but  had  besides  the  craft 
and  cunning  of  an  Indian.  Yet  the  cunning 
seemed  only  an  intensification  of  the 
subtlety,  a  deeper  degree  of  the  same  quality 
and  not  an  added  separate  quality.  In  fact, 
in  him,  as  in  many  with  the  same  mixture 
of  race,  the  Indian  strain  and  the  Spanish 
were  really  mingled,  not  merely  joined  in 
one  individual. 

Mariquita  had,  after  all,  only  one  quarter 
Spanish,  and  one  Indian;  whereas  with  him 


MARIQUITA 

it  was  a  quarter  of  half  and  half.  She  had, 
in  actual  blood,  a  whole  half  that  was  pure 
Saxon,  for  her  mother's  New  England  fam- 
ily was  of  pure  English  descent.  Yet  Mari- 
quita  seemed  far  more  purely  Spanish  than 
her  father;  he  himself  could  trace  nothing 
of  her  mother  in  her,  and  in  her  character 
was  nothing  Indian  but  her  patience. 

From  her  mother  personally  she  inherited 
nothing,  but  through  her  mother  she  had 
certain  characteristics  that  helped  to  make 
her  very  incomprehensible  to  Don  Joaquin, 
though  he  did  not  know  it. 

Gore,  who  studied  her  with  far  more 
care  and  interest,  because  to  him  she 
seemed  deeply  worth  study,  did  not  himself 
feel  compelled  to  remember  her  triple 
strain  of  race.  For  to  him  she  seemed  splen- 
didly, adorably  simple.  He  was  far  from 
falling  into  Sarella's  shallow  mistake  of 
calling  that  simplicity  "stupidity";  to  him  it 
appeared  a  sublimation  of  purity,  rarely 
noble  and  fine.  That  she  was  book-ignorant 
he  knew,  as  well  as  that  she  was  life-igno- 
rant; but  he  did  not  think  her  intellectually 
narrow,  even  intellectually  fallow.  Along 


MARIQUITA 

what  roads  her  mind  moved  he  could  not, 
by  mere  study  of  her,  discover;  yet  he  was 
sure  it  did  not  stagnate  without  motion  or 
life. 

About  a  month  after  the  arrival  of 
Sarella,  one  Saturday  night  at  supper,  that 
young  person  observed  that  Mr.  Gore's 
place  was  vacant. 

Mariquita  must  equally  have  noted  the 
fact,  but  she  had  said  nothing. 

"Isn't  Mr.  Gore  coming  to  his  supper?" 
Sarella  asked  her. 

Don  Joaquin  thought  this  out  of  place. 
His  daughter's  silence  on  the  subject  had 
pleased  him  better. 

"I  don't  know,"  Mariquita  answered, 
glancing  towards  her  father. 

"No,"  he  said;  "he  has  ridden  down  to 
Maxwell." 

Sometimes  one  or  other  of  the  cowboys 
would  ride  down  to  Maxwell,  and  reappear, 
without  question  or  remark. 

"I  wonder  he  did  not  mention  he  was 
going,"  Sarella  complained. 

"Of    course    he    mentioned    it,"    Don 

53 


MARIQUITA 

Joaquin  said  loudly.     "He  would  not  go 
without  asking  me." 

"But  to  us  ladies,"  Sarella  persisted,  "it 
would  have  been  better  manners." 

"That  was  not  at  all  necessary,"  said  Don 
Joaquin;  "Mariquita  would  not  expect  it." 

"I  would,  though.  It  ought  to  have 
struck  him  that  one  might  have  a  communi- 
cation for  him.  I  should  have  had  commis- 
sions for  him." 

It  was  evident  that  Sarella  had  ruffled 
Don  Joaquin,  and  it  was  the  first  time  any- 
one had  seen  him  annoyed  by  her. 

Next  day,  after  the  midday  meal,  Sarella 
followed  Mariquita  out  of  doors,  and  said 
to  her,  yawning  and  laughing. 

"Don't  you  miss  Mr.  Gore?" 

Mariquita  answered  at  once  and  quite 
simply: 

"Miss  him?  He  was  never  here  till  a 
month  ago — " 

"Nor  was  I,"  Sarella  interrupted  pouting 
prettily.  "But  you'd  miss  me,  now." 

"Only  you're  not  going  away." 

"You  take  it  for  granted  I  shall  stop, 

54 


MARIQUITA 

then?"    (And  Sarella  looked  complacent.) 
"That  I'm  a  fixture." 

"I  never  thought  of  your  going  away," 
Mariquita  answered,  with  a  formula  rather 
habitual  to  her.  "Where  would  you  go?" 

"I  should  decide  on  that  when  I  decided 
to  go."  Sarella  declared  oracularly.  But 
Mariquita  took  it  with  irritating  calmness. 

"I  don't  believe  you  will  decide  to  go," 
she  said  with  that  gravity  and  plainness  of 
hers  that  often  irritated  Sarella — who  liked 
badinage.  "It  would  be  useless." 

"Suppose,"  Sarella  suggested,  pinching 
the  younger  girl's  arm  playfully,  "suppose 
I  were  to  think  of  getting  married. 
Shouldn't  I  have  to  go  then?" 

"I  never  thought  of  that — "  Mariquita 
was  beginning,  but  Sarella  pinched  and  in- 
terrupted her. 

"Do  you  ever  think  of  anything?"  she 
complained  sharply. 

"Oh,  yes,  often,  of  many  things." 

"What  things  on  earth?"  (with  sudden 
inquisitive  eagerness.) 

"Just  my  own  sort  of  things,"  Mariquita 
answered,  without  saying  whether  "her 

55 


t- 
MARIQUITA 

things"  were  on  earth  at  all.    Sarella  pouted 
again. 

"You're  not  very  confidential  to  a 
person." 

Mariquita  weighed  the  accusation.  "Per- 
haps," she  said  quietly,  "I  am  not  much 
used  to  persons.  Since  I  came  home  from 
the  convent  there  was  no  other  girl  here  till 
you  came." 

"So  you're  sorry  I  camel" 

"No ;  glad.  I  am  glad  you  did  that.  It  is 
a  home  for  you.  And  I  am  sure  my  father 
is  glad." 

"You  think  he  likes  my  being  here?" 
And  Sarella  listened  attentively  for  the 
answer. 

"Of  course.    You  must  see  it." 

"You  think  he  does  not  dislike  me?  He 
was  cross  with  me  last  night." 

"He  did  not  like  you  noticing  Mr.  Gore 
was  away — " 

"Of  course  I  noticed  it — surely,  he  could 
not  be  jealous  of  that!" 

"I  should  not  think  he  could  be  jealous," 
Mariquita  agreed,  too  readily  to  please 
Sarella.  "But  I  did  not  think  of  it  I  am 

56 


TV 


MARIQUITA 

sure  he  does  not  dislike  you.  You  cannot 
think  he  does." 

Sarella  was  far  from  thinking  it.  But  she 
had  wanted  Mariquita  to  say  more,  and  was 
only  partly  satisfied. 

"He  would  not  like  me  to  go  away?"  she 
suggested. 

"Oh,  no.    The  contrary." 

"Not  even  if  it  were  advantageous  to 
me?" 

"How  advantageous?" 

"If  I  were  to  be  going  to  a  home  of  my 
own?  Going,  for  instance,  to  be  married?" 

"That  would  surprise  him    .    .    ." 

Sarella  was  not  pleased  at  this. 

"Surprise  him!  Why  should  it  surprise 
him  that  anyone  should  marry  me?" 

"There  is  no  reason.  Only,  he  does  not 
imagine  that  there  is  someone.  If  there  is 
someone,  he  would  suppose  you  had  not 
been  willing  to  marry  him  by  your  coming 
here  instead." 

("Is  she  stupid  or  cautious?"  Sarella 
asked  herself.  "She  will  say  nothing.") 

Mariquita  was  neither  cautious  nor 
stupid.  She  was  only  ignorant  of  Sarella's 

57 


MARIQUITA 

purpose,  and  by  no  means  awake  to  her 
father's. 

"It  is  terribly  hot  out  here,"  Sarella 
grumbled,  "and  there  is  such  a  glare.  I 
shall  go  in  and  study." 


CHAPTER  X. 

MARIQUITA  did  not  go  in  too.  She 
did  not  find  it  hot,  nor  did  the  glare 
trouble  her.  The  air  was  full  of  life 
and  vigor,  and  she  had  no  sense  of  lassitude. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  breeze  from  the  far-off 
Rockies,  and  to  her  it  seemed  cool  enough, 
though  the  sun  was  so  nearly  directly  over- 
head that  her  figure  cast  only  a  very  stunted 
shadow  of  herself.  In  the  long  grass  the 
breeze  made  a  slight  rustle,  but  there  was 
no  other  sound. 

Mariquita  did  not  want  to  be  indoors; 
outside,  here  on  the  tilted  prairie,  she  was 
alone  and  not  lonely.  The  tilt  of  the  vast 
space  around  her  showed  chiefly  in  this — 
that  eastward  the  horizon  was  visibly  lower 
than  at  the  western  rim  of  the  prairie.  The 
prairie  was  not  really  flat;  between  her  and 
both  horizons  there  lay  undulations,  those 
between  her  and  the  western  rising  into 
mesas,  which,  with  a  haze  so  light  as  only  to 

59 


MARIQUITA 

tell  in  the  great  distance,  hid  the  distant  bar- 
rier of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  whose  foot- 
hills even  were  beyond  the  frontiers  of  this 
State. 

She  knew  well  where  they  were,  though, 
and  knew  almost  exactly  beyond  which  point 
of  the  far  horizon  lay  Loretto  Heights, 
beyond  Denver,  and  the  Convent. 

Somehow  the  coming  of  these  two  new 
units  to  the  range-life  had  pushed  the  Con- 
vent farther  away  still.  But  Mariquita's 
thoughts  never  rested  in  the  mere  memories 
hanging  like  a  slowly  fading  arras  around 
that  long-concluded  convent  life.  What  it 
had  given  her  was  more  than  the  memories 
and  was  hers  still. 

As  to  the  mere  memories,  she  knew  that 
with  slow  but  increasing  pace  they  were 
receding  from  her,  till  on  time's  horizon 
they  would  end  in  a  haze,  golden  but  vague 
and  formless.  Voices  once  clearly  recalled 
were  losing  tone;  faces,  whose  features  had 
once  risen  before  the  eye  of  memory  with 
little  less  distinctness  than  that  with  which 
she  had  seen  them  when  physically  present, 
arose  now  blurred  like  faces  passing  a  fog. 

60 


MARIQUITA 

Even  their  individuality,  depending  less  on 
feature  than  expression,  was  no  longer  easily 
recoverable. 

She  had  been  used  to  remember  this  and 
that  nun  by  her  very  footsteps ;  now  the  nuns 
moved,  a  mere  group  in  one  costume, 
soundlessly,  with  no  footstep  at  all. 

Of  this  gradual  loss  of  what  had  been 
almost  her  only  private  possession  she  made 
no  inward  wishful  complaint;  Mariquita 
was  not  morbid,  nor  melancholy.  The  op- 
eration of  a  natural  law  of  life  could  not  fill 
her  with  the  poet's  rebellious  outcry.  To 
all  law  indeed  she  yielded  without  protest, 
whether  it  implied  submission  without  in- 
ward revolt  to  the  mere  shackles  of  circum- 
stance, or  submission  to  her  father's  domi- 
nance; for  it  was  not  in  her  fashion  of  mind 
to  form  hypothesis — such  hypothesis,  for  in- 
stance, as  that  of  her  father  calling  upon 
her  to  take  some  course  opposed  to  con- 
science. Though  her  gaze  was  turned  to- 
wards the  point  of  the  horizon  under  which 
the  Convent  and  its  intimates  were,  it  was 
not  simply  to  dream  of  them  that  she  yielded 
herself. 

61 


MARIQUITA 

All  that  life  had  had  a  centre — not  for 
herself  only,  but  for  all  there.  The  sim- 
plicity of  the  life  consisted,  above  all,  in 
the  simplicity  of  its  object.  Its  routine, 
almost  mechanically  regular,  was  not  me- 
chanical because  of  its  central  meaning.  No 
doubt  the  "work"  of  the  nuns  was  educa- 
tion, but  their  work  of  education  was  service 
of  a  Master.  And  the  Master  was  Himself 
the  real  object,  the  centre  of  the  work,  as 
carried  on  within  those  quiet,  busy  walls. 
Mariquita  no  longer  formed  a  part,  though 
the  work  was  still  operative  in  her,  and  had 
not  ceased  with  her  removal  from  the  work- 
ers; but  she  was  as  near  as  ever  to  its  centre, 
and  was  now  more  concerned  with  the  ulti- 
mate object  of  the  work  than  with  the  work. 

Her  memories  were  weakening  in  color 
and  definiteness,  but  her  possession  was  not 
decreased,  her  possession  was  the  Master 
who  possessed  herself. 

The  simplicity  that  Gore  had  from  the 
first  noted  in  her,  without  being  able  to  in- 
form himself  wherein  it  consisted — but 
which  he  venerated  without  knowing  its 
source,  that  he  knew  was  noble — was  first 

62 


MARIQUITA 

that  Mariquita  did  in  fact  live  and  move 
and  have  her  being,  as  nominally  all  His 
creatures  do,  in  the  Master  of  that  vanished 
convent  life.  What  the  prairie  was  to  her 
body,  surrounding  it,  its  sole  background 
and  scene  and  stage  of  action,  He  was  to 
her  inward,  very  vivid,  wholly  silent  life; 
what  the  prairie  was  to  her  healthy  lungs, 
He  was  to  her  soul,  its  breath,  "inspiration." 
Banal  and  stale  as  such  metaphor  is,  in  her 
the  two  lives  were  so  unified  (in  this  was 
the  rarity  of  her  "simplicity")  that  it  was 
at  least  completely  accurate. 

With  Mariquita  that  which  we  call  the 
supernatural  life  was  not  occasional  and 
spasmodic.  That  inspiration  of  Our  Lord 
was  not,  as  with  so  many,  a  gulp,  or  periodic 
series  of  gulps,  but  a  breathing  as  steady  and 
soundless  as  the  natural  breathing  of  her 
strong,  sane,  flawless  body. 

She  did  not,  like  the  self-conscious  pietist, 
listen  to  it.  She  did  not,  like  the  patho- 
logical pietist,  test  its  pulse  or  temperature. 
The  pathological  pietist  is  still  self-student, 
though  studious  of  self  in  a  new  relation; 
still  breathes  her  own  breath  at  second- 

63 


MARIQUITA 

hand,  and  remains  indoors  within  the  four 
walls  of  herself. 

Of  herself  Mariquita  knew  little.  That 
God  had  given  her,  in  truth,  existence;  that 
she  knew.  That  she  was,  because  He  chose. 
That  He  had  been  born,  and  died,  and  lived 
again,  for  her  sake,  as  much  as  for  the  sake 
of  any  one  of  all  the  saints,  though  not  more 
than  for  the  sake  of  the  human  being  in  all 
the  world  who  thought  least  of  Him:  that 
she  knew.  That  He  loved  her  incompar- 
ably better  than  she  could  love  herself  or 
any  other  person — that  she  knew  with  a 
reality  of  knowledge  greater  than  that  with 
which  any  lover  ever  knows  himself  beloved 
by  the  lover  who  would  give  and  lose  every- 
thing for  him.  That  He  had  already  set  in 
her  another  treasure,  the  capacity  of  loving 
Him — that  also  she  knew  with  ineffable  rev- 
erence and  gladness,  and  that  the  power  of 
loving  Him  grew  in  her,  as  the  power  of 
knowing  Him  grew. 

But  concerning  herself  Mariquita  knew 
little  except  such  things  as  these.  She  had 
studied  neither  her  own  capacities  nor  her 
own  limitations,  neither  her  tastes,  nor  her 


MARIQUITA 

gifts.  That  Sarella  thought  her  stupid,  she 
was  hardly  aware,  and  less  than  half  aware 
that  Sarella  was  wrong.  No  human  creature 
had  ever  told  her  that  she  was  beautiful,  and 
she  had  never  made  any  guess  on  the  subject 
with  herself.  She  never  wondered  if  she 
were  happy,  or  ever  unjustly  disinherited  of 
the  means  of  happiness.  Whether,  in  less 
strait  thrall  of  circumstance,  she  might  be 
of  more  consequence,  even  of  more  use,  she 
never  debated.  She  had  not  dreamed  of 
being  heroic;  had  no  chafing  at  absence  of 
either  sphere  or  capacity  for  being  brilliant. 
Her  life  was  passing  in  a  silence  singularly 
profound  among  the  lives  of  God's  other 
human  creatures,  and  its  silence,  unhuman- 
ness,  oblivion  (that  deepest  of  oblivion  lying 
beneath  what  has  been  known  though  for- 
gotten) did  not  vexl  her,  and  was  never 
thought  of.  Her  duties  were  coarse  and 
common ;  but  they  were  those  God  had  set 
in  her  way  and  sight,  and  she  had  no  im- 
patience of  them,  no  scorn  for  them,  but 
just  did  them.  They  were  not  more  coarse 
or  common  than  those  He  had  himself 
found  to  His  hand,  and  done,  in  the  house 

6? 


MARIQUITA 

at  Nazareth  where  Joseph  was  master,  and, 
after  Joseph,  Mary  was  mistress,  and  He, 
their  Creator,  third,  to  obey  and  serve  them. 

It  would  be  greatly  unjust  to  Mariquita 
to  say  that  the  monotone  of  her  life  was 
made  golden  by  the  bright  haze  in  which  it 
moved.  She  lived  not  in  a  dream,  but  in 
an  atmosphere.  She  was  not  a  dreamy  per- 
son, moving  through  realities  without  con- 
sciousness of  them.  She  saw  all  around  her, 
with  living  interest,  only  she  saw  beyond 
them  with  interest  deeper  still,  or  rather 
their  own  significance  for  her  was  made 
deeper  by  her  sense  of  what  was  beyond 
them,  and  to  which  they,  like  herself,  be- 
longed. She  was  very  conscious  of  her 
neighbors,  not  only  of  the  human  neighbors, 
but  also  of  the  live  creatures  not  human; 
and  each  of  these  had,  in  her  reverence,  a 
definite  sacredness  as  coming  like  herself 
from  the  hand  of  God. 

There  was  nothing  pantheistic  in  this; 
seeing  everything  as  God's  she  did  not  see  it 
itself  Divine,  but  every  natural  object  was 
to  her  clear  vision  but  a  thread  in  the  clear, 
transparent  veil  through  which  God  showed 

66 


MARIQUITA 

Himself  everywhere.  When  St.  Francis 
"preached  to  the  birds"  he  was  in  fact 
listening  to  their  sermon  to  him;  and 
Mariquita,  in  her  close  neighborly  friend- 
ship with  the  small  wild  creatures  of  the 
prairie,  was  only  worshipping  the  ineffable, 
kind  friendliness  of  God,  who  had  made, 
and  who  fed,  them  also.  The  love  she  gave 
them  was  only  one  of  the  myriad  silent  ex- 
pressions of  her  love  for  Him,  who  loved 
them.  They  were  easier  and  simpler  to 
understand  than  her  human  neighbors.  It 
was  not  that,  for  an  instant,  she  thought 
them  on  the  same  plane  of  interest — but  we 
must  here  interrupt  ourselves  as  she  was 
interrupted. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

MARIQUITA  had  been  alone  a  long 
time  when  Gore,  riding  home, 
came  suddenly  upon  her. 

She  was  sitting  where  a  clump  of  trees 
cast  now  a  shadow,  and  it  was  only  in  com- 
ing round  them  that  he  saw  her  when 
already  very  near  her.  The  ground  was 
soft  there,  and  his  horse's  hoofs  had  made 
scarcely  any  sound. 

She  turned  her  head,  and  he  saluted  her, 
at  the  same  moment  slipping  from  the 
saddle. 

"I  thought  you  were  far  away,"  she  said. 

"I  have  been  far  away — at  Maxwell.  It 
has  been  a  long  ride." 

"Yes,  that  is  a  long  way,"  she  said.  "But 
I  never  go  there." 

"No?    I  went  to  hear  Mass." 

She  was  surprised,  never  having  thought 
that  he  was  a  Catholic. 

68 


MARIQUITA 

"I  did  not  know  you  were  a  Catholic," 
she  told  him. 

"No  wonder  I  I  have  been  here  a  month 
and  never  been  to  Mass  before." 

"It  is  so  far.    I  never  go." 

"You  are  a  Catholic,  then?" 

"Oh,  yes;  I  think  all  Spaniards  are 
Catholics." 

"But  not  all  Americans,"  Gore  suggested 
smiling. 

"No.  And  of  course,  we  are  Americans, 
my  father  and  I." 

"Exactly.  No  doubt  I  knew  your  names, 
both  surname  and  Christian  name,  were 
Spanish,  and  I  supposed  you  were  of  Catho- 
lic descent — " 

"Only,"  she  interrupted  with  a  quiet  mat- 
ter-of-factness,  "you  saw  we  never  went  to 
Mass." 

"Perhaps  a  priest  comes  here  sometimes 
and  gives  you  Mass." 

"No,  never.  If  it  were  not  so  very  far,  I 
suppose  my  father  would  let  me  ride  down 
to  Maxwell  occasionally,  at  all  events.  But 
he  would  not  let  me  go  alone,  and  none  of 
the  men  are  Catholics ;  besides,  he  would  not 

69 


MABIQUITA 

wish  me  to  go  with  one  of  them ;  and  then 
it  would  be  necessary  to  go  down  on  Satur- 
day and  sleep  there.  Of  course,  he  would 
not  permit  that.  But,"  and  she  did  not  smile 
as  she  said  this,  "it  must  seem  strange  to  you, 
who  are  a  Catholic,  to  think  that  I,  who  am 
one  also,  should  never  hear  Mass.  Since  I 
left  the  Convent  and  came  home  I  do  not 
hear  it.  That  may  scandalize  you." 

"I  shall  never  be  scandalized  by  you,"  he 
answered,  also  without  smiling. 

"That  is  best,"  she  said.  "It  is  generally 
foolish  to  be  scandalized,  because  we  can 
know  so  little  about  each  other's  case." 

She  paused  a  moment,  and  he  thought 
how  little  need  she  could  ever  have  of  any 
charitable  suspension  of  judgment.  He 
knew  well  enough  by  instinct,  that  this  in- 
ability to  hear  Mass  must  be  the  great  dis- 
inheritance of  her  life  here  on  the  prairie, 
her  submission  to  it,  her  great  obedience. 

"But,"  she  went  on  earnestly,  "I  hope  you 
will  not  take  any  scandal  at  my  father  either 
— from  my  saying  that  he  would  not  permit 
my  going  down  to  Maxwell  and  staying 
there  all  night  on  Saturday  so  as  to  hear 

70 


MARIQUITA 

Mass  on  Sunday  morning.  (There  is,  you 
know,  only  one  Mass  there,  and  that  very 
early,  because  the  priest  has  to  go  far  into 
the  county  on  the  other  side  of  Maxwell 
to  give  another  Mass.)  We  know  no  family 
down  there  with  whom  I  could  stay.  He 
would  think  it  impossible  I  should  stay  with 
strange  people — or  in  an  hotel.  Our  Span- 
ish ideas  would  forbid  that." 

"Oh,  yes;  I  can  fully  understand.  You 
need  not  fear  my  being  so  stupid  as  to  take 
scandal.  I  have  all  my  life  had  enough  to 
do  being  scandalized  at  myself." 

"Ah,  yes!  That  is  so.  One  finds  that 
always.  Only  one  knows  that  God  is  more 
indulgent  to  one's  faults  than  one  has 
learned  to  be  oneself;  that  patience  comes 
so  very  slowly,  and  slower  still  the  humility 
that  would  teach  one  to  be  never  surprised 
at  any  fault  in  oneself." 

Gore  reverenced  her  too  truly  to  say, 
"Any  fault  would  surprise  me  in  you."  He 
only  assented  to  her  words,  as  if  they  were 
plain  and  cold  matter-of-fact,  and  let  hef 
go  on,  for  he  knew  she  had  more  to  say. 

"I  would  like,"  she  told  him,  "to  finish 


MARIQUITA 

about  my  father.  Because  to  you  he  may 
seem  just  careless.  You  may  think,  'But 
why  should  not  he  take  her  down  to  Max- 
well and  hear  Mass  himself  also?'  Coming 
from  the  usual  life  of  Catholics  to  this  life 
of  ours  on  the  prairies,  it  may  easily  occur 
to  you  like  that.  You  cannot  possibly  know 
— as  if  you  had  read  it  in  a  book — a  man's 
life  like  my  father's.  He  was  born  far  away 
from  here,  out  in  the  desert — in  New  Mex- 
ico. His  father  baptized  him — just  as  he 
baptized  me.  There  was  no  priest.  There 
was  no  Mass.  How  could  he  learn  to  think 
it  a  necessary  part  of  life?  no  one  can  learn 
to  think  necessary  what  is  impossible. 
From  that  desert  he  came  to  this  wilder- 
ness ;  very  different,  but  just  as  empty.  No 
Mass  here  either,  no  priest.  How  could  he 
be  expected  to  think  it  necessary  to  ride  far, 
far  away  to  find  Mass?  It  would  be  to  him 
like  riding  away  to  find  a  picture  gallery. 
He  couldn't  be  away  every  Saturday  and 
Sunday.  That  would  not  be  possible;  and 
what  is  not  possible  is  no  sin.  And  what  is 
no  sin  on  three  Sundays  out  of  four,  or  one 
Sunday  out  of  two,  how  should  it  seem  a  sin 

72 


MARIQUITA 

on  the  other  Sunday?  I  hope  you  will  un- 
derstand all  that." 

"Indeed,  yes!  I  hope  you  do  not  think 
I  have  been  judging  your  father  1  That 
would  be  a  great  impertinence." 

"Towards  God — yes.  That  is  His  busi- 
ness, and  no  one  else  understands  it  at  all. 
No,  I  did  not  think  you  would  have  been 
judging.  Only  I  thought  you  might  be 
troubled  a  little.  It  is  a  great  loss,  my 
father's  and  mine,  that  we  live  out  here 
where  there  is  no  Mass,  and  where  there  are 
no  Sacraments.  But  Our  Lord  does  the 
same  things  differently.  It  is  not  hard  for 
Him  to  make  up  losses." 

One  thing  which  struck  the  girl's  hearer 
was  that  the  grave  simplicity  of  her  tones 
was  never  sad.  It  seemed  to  him  the  per- 
fection of  obedience. 

"My  father,"  she  went  on,  "is  very  good. 
He  always  tells  the  truth.  Those  who  deal 
in  horses  are  said  to  tell  many  lies  about 
them.  He  never  does.  He  is  very  just — 
to  the  men,  and  everybody.  And  he  does 
not  grind  them,  nor  does  he  insult  them  in 
reproof.  He  hates  laziness  and  stupidity, 

73 


MARIQUITA 

and  will  not  suffer  either.  Yet  he  does  not 
gibe  in  finding  fault  nor  say  things,  being 
master,  to  which  they  being  servants  may 
not  retort.  That  makes  fault-finding  bitter 
and  intolerable.  He  works  very  hard  and 
takes  no  pleasure.  He  greatly  loved  my 
mother,  and  was  in  all  things  a  true  hus- 
band. That  was  a  great  burden  God  laid  on 
him — the  loss  of  her,  but  he  carried  it 
always  in  silence.  You  can  hardly  know  all 
these  things." 

Gore  saw  that  she  was  more  observant 
than  he  had  fancied — that  she  had  been 
conscious  of  criticism  in  him  of  her  father, 
and  was  earnest  in  exacting  justice  for  him. 

"But,"  he  said,  "I  shall  not  forget  them 


now.' 


"I  shall  thank  you  for  that,"  she  told  him, 
beginning  to  move  forward  towards  the 
homestead  that  was  full  in  sight,  half  a  mile 
away.  "And  it  will  be  getting  very  late. 
Tea  is  much  later  on  Sunday,  for  the  men 
like  to  sleep,  but  it  will  be  time  now." 

They  walked  on  together,  side  by  side,  he 
leading  his  horse  by  the  bridle  hung  loosely 
over  his  shoulder.  The  horse  after  its  very 

74 


MARIQUITA 

long  journey  of  to-day  and  yesterday  was 
tired  out,  and  only  too  willing  to  go  straight 
to  his  stable. 

They  did  not  now  talk  much.  Don 
Joaquin,  watching  them  as  they  came  from 
the  house  door,  saw  that. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

\  >TR  GORE  came  back  with  you," 
^^y  I  he  said  to  Mariquita  as  she 
joined  him.  Gore  had  gone 
round  to  the  stables  with  his  horse. 

"Yes.  As  he  came  back  from  Maxwell 
he  passed  the  place  where  I  was  sitting,  and 
we  came  on  together — after  talking  for  a 
time." 

Mariquita  did  not  think  her  father  was 
cross-examining  her.  Nor  was  he.  He  was 
not  given  to  inquisitiveness,  and  seldom 
scrutinized  her  doings. 

"Mr.  Gore,"  she  continued,  "went  to 
Maxwell  for  the  sake  of  going  to  Mass." 

"So  he  is  a  Catholic!"  And  Mariquita 
observed  with  pleasure  that  her  father  spoke 
in  a  tone  of  satisfaction.  He  had  never 
before  appeared  to  be  in  the  least  concerned 
with  the  religion  of  any  of  the  men  about 
the  place. 

That  night,  after  Sarella  and  Mariquita 


MARIQUITA 

had  gone  to  bed,  Don  Joaquin  had  another 
satisfaction.  He  and  Gore  were  alone, 
smoking;  all  the  large  party  ate  together, 
but  the  cowboys  went  off  to  their  own  quar- 
ters after  meals.  Only  Don  Joaquin,  his 
daughter,  Sajrella  and  Gore  slept  in  the 
dwelling-house.  So  high  up  above  sea-level, 
it  was  cold  enough  at  night,  and  the  log  fire 
was  pleasant. 

What  gave  him  satisf  action  was  that  Gore 
asked  him  about  the  price  of  a  range,  and 
whether  a  suitable  one  was  to  be  had  any- 
where near. 

"It  would  not  be,"  Don  Joaquin  bade  him 
note,  "the  price  of  the  range  only.  Without 
some  capital  it  would  be  throwing  money 
away  to  buy  one." 

"Of  course.  What  would  range  and  stock 
and  all  cost?" 

"That  would  depend  on  the  size  of  the 
range,  and  the  amount  of  stock  it  would 
bear.  And  also  on  whether  the  range  were 
very  far  out,  like  this  one.  If  it  were  near  a 
town  and  the  railway,  it  would  cost  more 
to  buy." 

Gore   quite  understood   that,    and    Don 

77 


MARIQUITA 

Joaquin  spoke  of  "Elaine's"  range.  "It 
lies  nearer  Maxwell  than  this.  But  it  is  not 
so  large,  and  Elaine  has  never  made  much 
of  it — he  had  not  capital  enough  to  put  on 
it  the  stock  it  should  have  had,  and  he  was 
never  the  right  man.  A  townsman  in  all 
his  bones,  and  his  wife  toway  too.  And 
their  girls  worse.  He  'wants  to  clear.  He 
will  never  do  good  there." 

The  two  men  discussed  the  matter  at  some 
length.  It  seemed  to  the  elder  of  them  that 
Gore  would  seriously  entertain  the  plan, 
and  had  the  money  for  the  purchase. 

"I  have  thought  sometimes,"  said  Joa- 
quin, "of  buying  Elaine's  myself." 

"Of  course,  I  would  not  think  of  it  if  you 
wanted  it.  I  would  not  even  make  any  in- 
quiry— that  would  be  sending  the  price  up." 

"Yes.  But,  if  you  decide  to  go  in  for  it, 
I  shall  not  mind.  I  have  land  enough  and 
stock  enough,  and  work  enough.  I  should 
have  bought  it  if  I  had  a  son  growing  up." 

It  was  satisfactory  to  Don  Joaquin  to  find 
that  Gore  could  buy  a  large  range  and 
afford  capital  to  stock  it.  If  he  went  on 
with  such  a  purchase  it  would  prove  him 


MARIQUITA 

"substantial  as  to  conditions."  And  he  was 
a  Catholic,  also  a  good  thing. 

Only  Sarella  should  be  a  Catholic  also. 
"So  you  went  down  to  Maxwell  to  go  to 
Mass,"  he  said,  just  as  they  were  putting  out 
their  pipes  to  go  to  bed.  "That  was  not  out 
of  place.  Perhaps  one  Saturday  we  may  go 
down  together." 

Gore  said,  of  course,  that  he  would  be 
glad  of  his  company. 

"It  would  not  be  myself  only,"  Don 
Joaquin  explained;  I  should  take  my 
daughter  and  her  cousin." 

When  Gore  had  an  opportunity  of  telling 
this  to  Mariquita  she  was  full  of  gladness. 

"See,"  she  said,  "how  strong  good  ex- 
ample is!" 

"Is  your  cousin,  then,  also  a  Catholic?" 
he  asked,  surprised  without  knowing  why. 

"Oh,  no  I  My  father  regrets  it,  and  would 
like  her  to  be  one.  That  shows  he  thinks  of 
religion  more  than  you  might  have  guessed." 

Gore  thought  that  it  showed  something 
else  as  well.  It  did  not,  however,  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  Mariquita  that  her  father 
wanted  to  marry  her  cousin. 

79 


MARIQUITA 

Sarella  strongly  approved  the  idea  of 
going  down,  all  four  of  them  together,  to 
Maxwell  some  Saturday. 

"Of  course,"  she  said,  "it  would  be  for 
two  nights,  at  least.  He  couldn't  expect  us 
to  ride  back  on  the  Sunday.  It  will  be  a 
treat — we  must  insist  on  starting  early 
enough  to  get  down  there  before  the  shops 
shut.  I  daresay  there  will  be  a  theatre." 

Mariquita,  suddenly,  after  five  years, 
promised  the  chance  of  hearing  Mass  and 
going  to  Holy  Communion,  was  not  sur- 
prised that  Sarella  should  only  think  of  it 
as  an  outing;  she  was  not  a  Catholic.  But 
she  thought  it  as  well  to  give  Sarella  a  hint. 

"I  expect,"  she  said,  "father  will  be 
hoping  that  you  would  come  to  Mass  with 


us." 


"I?  Do  you  think  that?  He  knows  I  am 
not  a  Catholic — why  should  he  care?" 

"Oh,  he  would  care.    I  am  sure  of  that." 

Sarella  laughed. 

"You  sly  puss!  I  believe  you  want  to 
convert  me,"  she  said,  shaking  her  head 
jocularly  at  Mariquita. 

"Of  course  I  should  be  glad  if  you  were 

80 


MABIQUITA 

a  Catholic.    Any  Catholic  would." 

"I  daresay  you  would.  But  your  father 
never  troubles  himself  about  such  things — 
he  leaves  them  to  the  women.  He  wouldn't 


care." 


"Yes,  he  would.  You  must  not  judge  my 
father — he  thinks  without  speaking;  he  is  a 
very  silent  person." 

Sarella  laughed  again. 

"Not  so  silent  as  you  imagine,"  she  said 
slyly;  "he  talks  to  me,  my  dear." 

"Very  likely.  I  daresay  you  are  easier 
to  talk  to  than  I  am.  For  I  too  am  silent — I 
have  not  seen  towns  and  things  like  you." 

"It  does  make  a  difference,"  Sarella 
admitted  complacently.  Then,  with  more 
covert  interest  than  she  showed:  "If  you 
really  think  he  would  like  me  to  go  with 
you  to  Mass,  I  should  be  glad  to  please  him. 
After  all,  one  should  encourage  him  in  this 
desire  to  resume  his  religious  duties.  Per- 
haps he  would  take  us  again." 

"I  am  quite  sure  he  would  like  you  to 
hear  Mass  with  us,"  Mariquita  repeated 
slowly. 

"Then  I  will  do  so.    You  had  better  tell 

8i 


MARIQUIT^S 

me  about  it — one  would  not  like  to  do  the 
wrong  thing." 

Perhaps  Mariquita  told  her  more  about 
it  than  Sarella  had  intended. 

"She  is  tremendously  in  earnest,  anyway," 
Sarella  decided;  "she  can  talk  on  that 
eagerly  enough.  I  must  say,"  she  thought, 
good-naturedly,  "I  am  glad  her  father's 
giving  her  the  chance  of  doing  it  I  had  no 
idea  she  felt  about  it  like  that.  She  is  good 
— to  care  so  much  and  never  say  a  word  of 
what  it  is  to  her  not  to  have  it.  I  never 
thought  there  was  an  ounce  of  religion  about 
the  place.  She  evidently  thinks  her  father 
cares,  too.  I  should  want  some  persuading 
of  that.  But  she  may  be  right  in  saying  he 
expects  me  to  go  to  his  church.  She  is  very 
positive.  And  some  men  are  like  that — 
their  women  must  do  what  they  do.  They 
leave  church  alone  for  twenty  years,  but 
when  they  begin  to  go  to  church  their 
women  must  go  at  once.  And  the  Don  is 
masterful  enough.  Perhaps  he  thinks  it's 
time  he  began  to  remember  his  soul.  If  so, 
he  is  sure  to  begin  by  bothering  about  other 
people's  souls.  She  thinks  a  lot  more  of 

82 


MARIQUITA 

him  than  he  thinks  of  her.  In  his  way, 
though,  he  is  just  as  Spanish  as  she  is;  I 
suppose  that's  why  I'm  to  go  to  Mass." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

DON  JOAQUIN  had  sounded  Mari- 
quita  with  reference  to  Sarella's 
religion.  It  suited  him  to  sound 
Sarella  in  reference  to  Mariquita — and 
another  person.  This  he  would  not  have 
done  had  he  not  regarded  Sarella  as  poten- 
tially a  near  relation. 

"Mr.  Gore  talks  about  interesting 
things?"  he  observed  tentatively. 

"What  people  call  'interesting  things'  are 
sometimes  very  tedious,"  she  answered 
smartly,  intending  to  please  him. 

He  was  a  little  pleased,  but  not  diverted 
from  his  purpose.  He  never  was  diverted 
from  his  purposes. 

"He  is  a  different  sort  of  person  from  any 
Mariquita  has  known,"  he  remarked;  "con- 
versation like  his  must  interest  her." 

"Only,  she  does  not  converse  with  him." 

"But  she  hears." 

"Oh!    Mariquita  hears  everything." 


MAKIQUITA 

"You  don't  think  she  finds  him  tedious?'7 
"Oh,  no!    She  does  not  know  anyone  is 

tedious."    It  by  no  means  struck  her  father 

that  this  was  a  fault  in  her. 

"It  is  better  to  be  content  with  one's 
company,"  he  said.  Then,  "He  does  not 
find  her  tedious,  I  think,  though  she  speaks 
little." 

"Mr.  Gore?  Anything  but!"  And  Sarella 
laughed. 

Don  Joaquin  waited  for  more,  and  got  it. 

"Nobody  could  interest  him  more,"  she 
declared  with  conviction,  shaking  her  head 
with  pregnant  meaning. 

"Ah!  So  I  have  thought  sometimes,"  Don 
Joaquin  agreed. 

"Anyone  could  see  it.  Except  Mari- 
quita,"  she  proceeded. 

"Mariquita  not?" 

"Not  she!  Mariquita's  eyes  look  so  high 
she  cannot  see  you  and  me,  nor  Mr.  Gore." 

After  "you  and  me"  Sarella  had  made  an 
infinitesimal  pause,  and  had  darted  an  in- 
stantaneous glance  at  Don  Joaquin.  He  had 
scarcely  time  to  catch  the  glance  before  it 

85 


MARIQUITA 

was  averted  and  Sarella  added,  "or  Mr. 
Gore." 

Don  Joaquin  did  not  think  it  objection- 
able in  his  daughter  "not  to  see"  "you  and 
me" — himself  and  Sarella — too  hastily.  But 
it  would  ultimately  be  advisable  that  she 
should  see  what  was  coming  before  it 
actually  came.  That  would  save  telling. 
Neither  would  he  have  been  pleased  if  she 
had  quickly  scented  a  lover  in  Mr.  Gore; 
that  would  have  offended  her  father's  sense 
of  dignity.  Nor  would  it  have  been  advis- 
able for  her  to  suspect  a  lover  in  Mr.  Gore 
at  any  time,  if  Mr.  Gore  were  not  intending 
to  be  one.  Once  he  was  really  desirous  of 
being  one,  and  her  father  approved,  she 
might  as  well  awake  to  it. 

"It  is  true,"  he  said,  "Mariquita  has  not 
those  ideas." 

There  was  undoubtedly  a  calm  communi- 
cation in  his  tone.  Sarella  could  not  decide 
whether  it  implied  censure  of  "those  ideas" 
elsewhere. 

"Not  seeing  what  can  be  seen,"  she  sug- 
gested with  some  pique,  "may  deceive 
others.  Thus  false  hopes  are  given." 

86 


"Mariquita  has  given  no  hopes  to  any- 
one," her  father  declared  sharply. 

"Certainly  not.  Yet  Mr.  Gore  may  think 
that  what  is  visible  must  be  seen — like  his 
'interest'  in  her;  and  that,  since  it  is  seen 
and  not  disapproved  .  .  ." 

"Only,    as  you   said,   Mariquita   doesn't 


see.' 


"He  may  not  understand  that.  He  may 
see  nothing  objectionable  in  himself  .  .  ." 

"There  is  nothing  objectionable.  The 
contrary." 

And  Sarella  knew  from  his  tone  that  Don 
Joaquin  did  not  disapprove  of  Mr.  Gore  as 
a  possible  son-in-law. 

"How  hard  it  is,"  she  thought,  "to  get 
these  Spaniards  to  say  anything  out.  Why 
can't  they  say  what  they  mean?" 

Sarella  was  not  deficient  in  a  sort  of 
superficial  good-nature.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  she  would  have  to  "help  things  along." 
She  thought  it  out  of  the  question  for  Mari- 
quita to  go  on  indefinitely  at  the  range,  doing 
the  work  of  three  women  for  no  reward, 
and  rapidly  losing  her  youth,  letting  her  life 
be  simply  wasted.  There  had  never  been 

87 


MARIQUITA 

anyone  before  Mr.  Gore,  and  never  would 
be  anyone  else;  it  would  be  a  providential 
way  out  of  the  present  impossible  state  of 
things  if  he  and  Mariquita  should  make  a 
match  of  it.  And  why  shouldn't  they?  She 
did  not  believe  that  he  was  actually  in  love 
with  Mariquita  yet;  perhaps  he  never  would 
be  till  he  discovered  in  her  some  sort  of 
response.  And  Mariquita  if  left  to  herself 
was  capable  of  going  on  for  ten  years  just 
as  she  was. 

"Mr.  Gore,"  she  told  Don  Joaquin,  "is 
not  the  sort  of  man  to  throw  himself  at  a 
girl's  head  if  he  imagined  it  would  be  un- 
pleasant to  her." 

"Why  should  he  be  unpleasant  to  her?" 

"No  reason  at  all.  And  he  isn't  unpleas- 
ant to  her.  Only  she  never  thinks  of — that 
sort  of  thing." 

Her  father  did  not  want  her  to  "think  of 
that  sort  of  thing" — till  called  upon.  Sarella 
saw  that,  and  thought  him  as  stupid  as  his 
daughter. 

His  idea  of  what  would  be  correct  was 
that  Gore  should  "speak  to  him,"  that  he 
should  (after  due  examination  of  his  condi- 


MARIQUITA 

dons)  signify  approval,  first  to  Gore  him- 
self, and  then  to  Mariquita,  whereupon  it 
would  be  her  duty  to  listen  encouragingly  to 
Mr.  Gore's  proposals.  Don  Joaquin  made 
Sarella  understand  that  these  were  his 
notions. 

("How  Spanish!"  she  thought.) 
"You'll  never  get  it  done  that  way,"  she 
told  him  shortly.    "Mr.  Gore  will  not  say  a 
word  to  you  till  he  thinks  Mariquita  would 
not  be  offended — " 

"Why  should  she  be  offended  I" 
"She  would  be,  if  Mr.  Gore  came  to  you, 
till  she  had  given  him  some  cause  for  believ- 
ing she  cared  at  all  for  him.  He  knows 
that  well  enough.  You  may  be  sure  that 
while  she  seems  unaware  of  his  taking  an 
interest  in  her,  he  will  never  give  you  the 
least  hint.  He  doesn't  want  to  marry  her — 
yet.  He  won't  let  himself  want  it  before 
she  gives  some  sign. 

Sarella  understood  her  own  meaning  quite 
well,  but  Don  Joaquin  did  not  understand 
it  so  clearly. 

He  took  an  early  opportunity  of  saying 
to  his  daughter: 


MARIQUITA 

"I  think  Mr.  Gore  a  nice  man.  He  is 
correct.  I  approve  of  him.  And  it  is  an 
advantage  that  he  is  a  Catholic." 

To  call  it  "an  advantage"  seemed  to 
Mariquita  a  dry  way  of  putting  it,  but  then 
her  father  'was  dry. 

"Living  in  the  house,"  he  continued, 
wishing  she  would  say  something,  "he  must 
be  intimate  with  us.  I  find  him  suitable  for 
that.  One  would  not  care  for  it  in  every 
case.  Had  he  turned  out  a  different  sort  of 
person,  I  should  not  have  wished  for  any 
friendship  between  him  and  yourselves- 
Sarella  and  you.  It  might  have  been  out 
of  place." 

"I  do  not  think  there  would  ever  be  much 
friendship  between  Sarella  and  him,"  said 
Mariquita ;  "she  hardly  listens  when  he  talks 
about  things — " 

"But  you  should  listen.  It  would  be  not 
courteous  to  make  him  think  you  found  his 
conversation  tedious." 

"Tedious!    I  listen  with  interest." 

"No  doubt.  And  there  is  nothing  out  of 
place  in  your  showing  it.  He  is  no  longer 
a  stranger  to  us." 

90 


MARIQUITA 

"He  is  kind,"  she  said.  "He  worked  hard 
to  help  Jack  in  getting  his  shed  fit  for 
Ginger.  It  was  he  who  built  the  partitions. 
Jack  told  me.  Mr.  Gore  said  nothing  about 
it  Also,  he  was  good  to  Ben  Sturt  when  he 
hurt  his  knee  and  could  not  ride;  he  went 
and  sat  with  him,  chatting,  and  read  funny 
books  to  him.  He  is  a  very  kind  person.  I 
am  glad  you  like  him — I  was  not  sure." 

"I  waited.  One  wishes  to  know  a 
stranger  before  liking  him,  as  you  call  it; 
what  is  more  important,  I  approve  of  him, 
and  find  him  correct." 

Whether  this  helped  much  we  cannot  say. 
Sarella  didn't  think  so,  though  Don 
Joaquin  reported  it  to  her  with  much  com- 
placence. 

"She  must  know  now,"  he  said,  "that  I 
authorize  him." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

JACK  sounded  Mr.  Gore's  praises  loudly 
in  Mariquita's  ears,  and  she  heard  them 
gladly.  She  thought  well  of  her  fellow- 
creatures,  and  it  was  always  pleasant  to  her 
to  hear  them  commended. 

Jack  also  bragged  a  little  of  his  diplo- 
macy, bidding  his  daughter  note  how  Miss 
Mariquita  had  been  pleased  by  his  praise  of 
her  sweetheart. 

"Miss  Mariquita  has  not  got  even  a 
sweetheart,"  Ginger  declared,  "and  maybe 
never  will.  It  isn't  the  way  of  her.  She 
was  just  as  proud  when  you  said  a  good 
word  for  Ben  Sturt." 

"Ben  Sturt!  What's  he  to  the  young 
mistress?" 

"Just  nothing  at  all — not  in  that  way. 
Nor  yet  Mr.  Gore  isn't.  And  the  more's 
the  pity.  But  she's  good-hearted.  She  likes 
to  hear  good  of  folk — as  much  as  some  likes 
to  hear  ill  of  anybody,  no  matter  who." 

92 


MARIQUITA 

Jack  was  a  little  discouraged — but  not 
effectually. 

Mr.  Gore  was  much  too  slow,  he  thought. 
iWhy  should  Miss  Mariquita  be  thinking  of 
him  unless  he  "let  on"  how  much  he  was 
thinking  of  her? 

"Did  you  ever  lie  under  an  apple-tree 
when  the  blossom  was  on  it?"  he  asked  Gore 
one  day. 

"I  daresay  I  have." 

"And  expected  to  have  your  mouth  full 
of  apples  when  there  was  only  blossom 
on  it?" 

Jack  forced  so  much  meaning  into  his 
ugly  old  face  that  Gore  could  discern  the 
allegorical  intent.  He  was  very  amused. 

"There'd  never  be  much  chance,  of 
apples,"  he  said  carelessly,  "if  the  tree  was 
shaken  till  the  blossom  fell  off.  The  wind 
spoils  more  blossom  than  the  frost  does." 

Jack  was  not  the  only  one  who  thought 
Gore  slow  in  his  wooing;  the  cowboys 
thought  so  too,  though  they  did  not,  like 
Jack,  find  any  fault  with  him  for  his  slow- 
ness. In  general  they  would  have  been  more 
critical  of  rapidity  and  apparent  success.  Ben 

93 


Sturt  had  learned  to  like  him  cordially,  and 
wished  him  success,  but  Ben  was  of  opinion 
that  more  haste  would  have  been  worse 
speed.  He  thought  that  Gore  deserved 
Mariquita  if  anyone  could,  but  was  sure 
that  even  Gore  would  have  to  wait  long  and 
be  very  patient  and  careful.  To  Ben  Mari- 
quita seemed  almost  like  one  belonging  to 
another  world,  certainly  living  on  a  plane 
above  his  comprehension,  where  ordinary 
love-making  would  be,  somehow,  unfitting 
and  hopeless.  It  had  always  met  with  her 
father's  cool  approbation  that  Mariquita 
kept  herself  aloof  from  the  young  men 
about  the  place.  But  she  was  not  wanting 
in  interest  for  them.  They  were  her  neigh- 
bors, and  she,  who  had  so  much  interest  for 
all  her  little  dumb  neighbors  of  the  prairie, 
had  a  much  higher  interest  in  these  bigger, 
but  not  much  less  dumb,  neighbors  of  the 
homestead.  They  were  more  than  a  mere 
group  to  her.  Each  individual  in  the  group 
was,  she  knew,  as  dear  to  God  as  herself, 
had  been  created  by  God  for  the  same  pur- 
pose as  herself,  and  for  the  soul  of  each, 
Christ  upon  the  Cross  had  been  in  as  bitter 

94 


MARIQUITA 

labor  as  for  the  soul  of  any  one  of  the 
saints.  She  was  the  last  creature  on  earth 
to  regard  as  of  mere  casual  interest  to  herself 
those  in  whom  God's  interest  was  so  deep, 
and  close,  and  unfailing. 

Perhaps  they  were  rough;  it  might  be 
that  of  the  great  things  of  which  Mariquita 
herself  thought  so  habitually,  they  thought 
little  and  seldom:  but  she  did  not  think 
them  bad.  She  thought  more  of  them  than 
they  guessed,  and  liked  them  better  than 
they  imagined.  She  would  have  wished 
to  serve  and  help  them,  and  was  not  indo- 
lent, but  humble  concerning  herself,  and 
shy.  She  worked  for  them,  more  perhaps 
than  her  father  thought  necessary;  in  that 
way  she  could  serve  them.  But  she  could 
not  preach  to  them,  nor  exhort  them.  She 
would  have  shrunk  instinctively,  not  from 
the  danger  of  ridicule,  but  from  the  danger 
that  the  ridicule  might  fall  on  religion  itself, 
and  not  merely  on  her.  She  would  have 
dreaded  the  risk  of  misrepresenting  religion 
to  them,  of  giving  them  ideas  of  God  such 
as  would  repel  them  from  Him.  She  knew 
that  speech  was  not  easy  to  her,  eloquent 


MARIQUITA 

speech  was  no  gift  of  hers ;  she  did  not  be- 
lieve herself  to  have  any  readiness  of  ex- 
pressing what  she  felt  and  knew,  and  did 
not  credit  herself  with  great  knowledge. 
She  did  not  really  put  them  down  as  being 
entirely  ignorant  of  what  she  did  know. 

The  idea  of  a  woman's  preaching  would 
have  shocked  Mariquita,  to  her  it  would 
have  seemed  "out  of  place."  She  was  a 
humble  girl,  with  a  diffidence  not  universal 
among  those  who  are  themselves  trying  to 
serve  God,  some  of  whom  are  apt  to  be  slow 
at  understanding  that  others  may  be  as  near 
Him  as  themselves,  though  behaving  dif- 
ferently, and  holding  a  different  fashion  of 
speech. 

God  who  had  made  them  must  know 
more  about  them,  she  felt,  than  she  could. 
She  did  not  think  she  understood  them  very 
well,  but  God  had  made  the  men  and  knew 
them  as  well  as  He  knew  the  women.  She 
was,  with  all  her  ignorance  and  her  limited 
opportunities  of  observation  and  under- 
standing, able  to  see  much  goodness  among 
these  neighbors  of  hers;  He  must  be  able 
to  see  much  more. 

96 


MARIQUITA 

In  reality  Mariquita  did  more  for  them 
than  she  had  any  idea  of.  They  understood 
that  in  her  was  something  higher  than  their 
understanding;  that  her  goodness  was  real 
they  did  understand.  It  never  shocked  them 
as  the  "goodness"  of  some  good  people  would 
by  a  first  instinct  have  shocked  them,  by  its 
uncharity,  its  self-conscious  superiority,  its 
selfishness,  its  complacence,  its  eagerness  to 
assume  the  Divine  prerogative  of  judgment 
and  of  punishment.  They  were,  perhaps 
unconsciously,  proud  of  her,  who  was  so 
plainly  never  proud  of  herself.  They  knew 
that  she  was  kind.  They  had  penetration 
enough  to  be  aware  that  if  she  held  her  own 
way,  in  some  external  aloofness,  it  was  not 
out  of  cold  indifference,  or  self-centred 
pride,  not  even  out  of  a  prudish  shrinking 
from  their  roughness.  They  became  less 
rough.  Their  behavior  in  her  sight  and 
hearing  was  not  without  effect  upon  their 
behavior  in  her  absence.  She  taught  them 
a  reverence  for  woman  that  may  only  have 
begun  in  respect  for  herself.  Almost  all 
of  them  cared  enough  for  her  approval  to 
try  and  become  more  capable  of  deserving 

97 


MARIQUITA 

it.  Some  of  them,  God  who  taught  them 
knows  how,  became  conscious  of  her  lonely 
absorption  in  prayer,  and  the  prairie  be- 
came less  empty  to  them.  Probably  none 
of  them  remained  ignorant  that  to  the  girl 
God  was  life  and  breath,  happiness  and 
health,  master  and  companion:  the  explana- 
tion of  herself  and  of  her  beauty.  They 
did  not  understand  it  all,  but  they  saw  more 
than  they  understood. 

The  loveliness  of  each  flower  preached 
to  Mariquita;  sometimes  she  would  sit 
upon  the  ground,  her  heart  beating,  hold- 
ing in  her  hand  one  of  those  tiny  weeds 
that  millions  of  eyes  can  overlook  without 
perceiving  they  are  beautiful,  insignificant 
in  size,  without  any  blaze  of  color,  and 
realize  its  marvel  of  loveliness  with  a  sin- 
gular exultation;  she  would  note  the 
exquisite  perfection  of  its  minute  parts- 
that  each  tiny  spray  was  a  string  of  stars, 
white,  or  tenderest  azure,  or  mauve,  gold- 
centred,  a  microscopic  installation  hidden 
all  its  life  on  the  prairie-floor,  as  if  falling 
from  heaven  it  had  grown  smaller  and 
smaller  as  it  neared  the  earth.  Her  heart 


MARIQUITA 

beat,  I  say,  as  she  looked,  and  the  light  shin- 
ing in  her  happy  eyes  was  exultation  at  the 
unimaginable  loveliness  of  God,  who  had 
imagined  this  minutest  creature,  and 
thought  it  worth  while  to  conceive  this  and 
every  other  lovely  thing  for  the  house  even 
of  His  children's  exile  and  probation,  their 
waiting-room  on  the  upward  road.  So  it 
preached  to  her  the  Uncreated  Beauty,  and 
the  unbeginning,  Eternal  Love.  As  uncon- 
scious as  was  the  little  flower  of  its  frag- 
rance, its  loveliness  and  its  message,  Mari- 
quita,  who  could  never  have  preached,  was 
giving  her  message  too. 

Her  rough  neighbors  saw  her  near  them 
and  (perhaps  without  knowing  that  they 
knew  it)  knew  that  that  which  made  her 
rare  and  exquisite  was  of  Divine  origin. 
She  never  hinted  covert  exhortation  in  her 
talk.  If  she  spoke  to  any  of  them  they  could 
listen  without  dread  of  some  shrewdly 
folded  rebuke.  Yet  they  could  not  get  away 
from  the  fact  that  she  was  herself  a  per- 
petual reminder  of  noble  purpose. 


99 


CHAPTER  XV. 

WHAT  the  cowboys  had  come,  with 
varying  degrees  of  slowness  or 
celerity,  to  feel  by  intuitions  little 
instructed  by  experience  or  reasoning,  Gore 
had  to  arrive  at  by  more  deliberate  study. 

He  was  more  civilized  and  less  instinc- 
tive. He  knew  many  more  people,  and  had 
experience,  wanting  to  them,  of  many 
women  of  fine  and  high  character.  What 
made  the  rarity  of  Mariquita's  instinct  did 
not  inform  him,  and  he  had  to  observe  and 
surmise. 

He  saw  no  books  in  the  house,  and  did 
not  perceive  how  Mariquita  could  read; 
she  must,  in  the  way  of  information  and 
knowledge  such  as  most  educated  girls  pos- 
sess be,  as  it  were,  disinherited.  Yet  he  did 
not  feel  that  she  was  ignorant.  It  is  more 
ignorant  to  have  adopted  false  knowledge 
than  to  be  uninformed. 

Every  day  added  to  Gore's  sense  of  the 
girl's  rarity  and  nobility.  He  admired  her 

100 


MARJQUITA 

.'  .  i 
more  and  more,  the  reverence  5f  his  a'dmi- 

ration  increasing  with  its  growth;  Not*  "was 
his  appreciation  blind,  or'  b'linded.  He 
surmised  a  certain  lack  in  her — the  absence 
of  humor,  and  he  was,  at  any  rate,  so  far 
correct  that  Mariquita  was  without  the 
habit  of  humor.  Long  after  this  time,  she 
was  thought  by  her  companions  to  have  a 
delightful  radiant  cheerfulness  like  mirth. 
But  when  Gore  first  knew  her,  what  occa- 
sion had  she  had  for  indulgence  in  the 
habit  of  humor? 

Her  father's  house  was  not  gay,  and  he 
would  have  thought  gaiety  in  it  out  of  place. 
Loud  laughter  might  resound  in  the  cow- 
boys' quarters,  but  Don  Joaquin  would  have 
much  disapproved  any  curiosity  in  his 
daughter  as  to  its  cause.  He  seldom  laughed 
himself  and  never  wished  to  make  anyone 
else  laugh.  His  Spanish  blood  and  his  In- 
dian blood  almost  equally  tended  to  make 
him  regard  laughter  and  merriment  as  a 
slur  on  dignity. 

Some  of  those  who  have  attempted  the 
elusive  feat  of  analyzing  the  causes  and 
origin  of  humor  lay  down  that  it  lies  in  a 

101 


MARIQUITA 

perception  oi  the  incongruous,  the  less  fit. 
I  should  be  sorry  to  think  that  a  complete 
account  of  the  matter.  No  doubt  it  describes 
the  occasion  of  much  of  our  laughter, 
though  not,  I  refuse  to  believe,  of  all. 

That  sense  of  humor  implies  little  charity, 
and  a  good  deal  of  conscious  superiority.  It 
makes  us  laugh  at  accidents  not  agreeable  to 
those  who  suffer  them,  at  uncouthness,  ig- 
norances, solecisms,  inferiorities,  follies, 
blunders,  stupidities,  unconsciously  dis- 
played weaknesses  and  faults.  It  is  the  sort 
of  humor  that  sets  us  laughing  at  a  smartly 
dressed  person  fallen  into  a  filthy  drain,  at 
a  man  who  does  not  know  how  to  eat 
decently,  at  mispronunciation  of  names, 
and  misapplication  or  oblivion  of  aspirates, 
at  greediness  not  veiled  by  politeness,  at  a 
man  singing  who  doesn't  know  how.  Now 
Mariquita  had  no  conceit  and  was  steeped  in 
charity  in  big  and  little  things.  In  that 
sort  of  humor  she  would  have  been  lacking, 
for  she  would  have  thought  too  kindly  of 
its  butt  to  be  able  to  enjoy  his  misfortune. 
And,  as  has  been  already  said,  she  had  no 
habit  of  the  thing. 


MARIQUITA 

Gore,  in  accusing  her  of  lack  of  humor, 
felt  that  the  accusation  was  a  heavy  one.  It 
was  not  quite  unjust:  we  have  partly 
explained1  Mariquita's  deficiency  without 
entirely  denying  it,  or  pretending  it  was  an 
attraction.  No  doubt,  she  would  have  been 
a  greater  laugher  if  she  had  been  more  ill- 
natured,  had  had  wider  opportunities  of 
perceiving  the  absurdity  of  her  contem- 
poraries. 

As  for  those  queer  and  quaint  quips  of 
circumstance  that  make  the  oddity  of  daily 
life  for  some  of  us,  few  of  them  had  en- 
livened Mariquita.  The  chief  occasion  of 
general  gathering  was  round  the  table, 
where  hunger  and  haste  were  the  most 
obvious  characteristics  of  the  meeting.  Till 
Gore  came,  there  had  been  little  conversa- 
tion. It  was  not  Mariquita's  fault  that  she 
had  been  used  neither  to  see  or  hear  much 
that  was  entertaining.  Perhaps  the  facility 
of  being  amused  is  an  acquired  taste;  and 
even  so,  the  faculty  of  humor  is  almost  of 
necessity  dormant  where  scarcely  anything 
offers  for  it  to  work  or  feed  upon, 


103 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  projected  visit  to  Maxwell  did 
not  immediately  take  place.  Don 
Joaquin  was  seldom  hasty  in  action, 
having  a  chronic,  habitual  esteem  for  delib- 
eration and  deliberateness  too. 

Sarella  would  have  been  impatient  had 
she  not  been  sufficiently  unwell  to  shrink  for 
the  moment  from  the  idea  of  a  very  long 
ride.  For  the  mere  pleasure  of  riding  she 
would  never  have  mounted  a  horse;  she 
would  only  ride  when  there  was  no  other 
means  of  arriving  at  some  object  or  place 
not  otherwise  attainable. 

Gore,  however,  was  again  absent  on  the 
second  Saturday  after  his  first  visit  to  Max- 
well. And  on  this  occasion  his  place  was 
vacant  at  breakfast.  Nor  did  he  return 
till  Monday  afternoon. 

On  that  afternoon  Mariquita  had  walked 
out  some  distance  across  the  prairie.  Not  in 
the  direction  of  the  Maxwell  trail,  but  quite 

104 


MARIQUITA 

in  the  opposite  direction.  Her  way  brought 
her  to  what  they  called  Saul  Bluff — a  very 
low,  broken  ridge,  sparsely  overgrown  with 
small  rather  shabby  trees.  It  would  scarcely 
have  hidden  the  chimneys  of  a  cottage  had 
there  been  any  cottage  on  its  farther  side; 
but  there  was  none  anywhere  near  it.  For 
many  miles  there  was  no  building  in  any 
direction,  except  "Don  Jo's,"  as,  to  its 
owner's  annoyance,  his  homestead  was 
called. 

When  Mariquita  had  reached  the  top  of 
the  bluff  she  took  advantage  of  the  slight 
elevation  on  which  she  stood,  to  look  round 
upon  the  great  spread  of  country  stretching 
to  the  low  horizon  on  every  side.  It  was, 
like  most  days  here,  a  day  of  wind  and  sun. 
The  air  was  utterly  pure  and  scentless;  the 
scent  was  not  fir-scent,  and  the  scattered, 
windy  trees  gave  no  smell.  She  saw  a  chip- 
munk and  laughed,  as  the  sight  of  that  queer 
little  creature,  and  its  odd  mixture  of  shy- 
ness and  effrontery  always  made  her  laugh. 

It  was  even  singularly  clear,  and  the  foot- 
hills of  the  Rockies  were  just  visible.  The 
trail,  which  ran  over  the  bluff  a  little  to  her 

105 


MARIQUITA 

left,  was  full  in  sight  below  her,  but  so  little 
used  as  to  be  slight  enough.  A  mile  farther 
on  it  crossed  the  river,  and  was  too  faint  to 
be  seen  beyond.  The  river  was  five  miles 
behind  her  as  well  as  a  mile  in  front,  for  it 
made  a  big  loop,  north,  and  then,  west- 
about,  southward. 

She  sat  down  and  for  a  long  time  was  rapt 
in  her  own  thoughts,  which  were  not,  at  first, 
of  any  human  person.  Perhaps  she  would 
not  herself  have  said  that  she  was  praying. 
But  all  prayer  does  not  consist  in  begging 
favors  even  for  others.  Its  essence  does  not 
lie  in  request,  but  in  the  lifting  of  self,  heart 
and  mind,  to  God.  The  love  of  a  child  to 
its  father  need  not  necessarily  find  its  sole 
exercise  and  expression  in  demand.  Her 
thought  and  love  flew  up  to  her  Father  and 
rested,  immeasurably  happy.  The  real  joys 
of  her  life  were  in  that  presence.  The  sense 
of  His  love,  not  merely  for  herself,  was  the 
higher  bliss  it  gave  her:  not  merely  for  her- 
self, I  say,  for  it  spread  as  wide  as  all 
'humanity,  and  her  own  share  in  it  was  as 
little  as  a  star  in  the  milky  way,  in  the  whole 
glory,  what  it  is  for  all  the  saints  in  heaven 

1 06 


MARIQUITA 

and  on  earth,  for  all  sinners,  for  His  great 
Mother,  and,  most  immeasurable  of  all,  the 
infinite  perfection  of  His  love  for  Himself, 
of  Father  and  Son  for  the  Holy  Spirit,  of 
Son  and  Spirit  for  the  Eternal  Father,  of 
Spirit  and  Father  for  the  Son.  This 
stretched  far  beyond  the  reach  of  her 
vision,  but  she  looked  as  far  as  her  human 
sight  could  reach,  as  one  looks  on  that  much 
of  the  mystic  ocean  that  eye  can  hold.  Not 
separable  from  this  joy  in  the  Divine  Love 
was  her  joy  in  the  Divine  Beauty,  of  which 
all  created  beauty  sang,  whether  it  were  that 
of  the  smallest  flower  or  that  of  Christ's 
Mother  herself.  The  wind's  clean  breath 
whispered  of  it;  the  vast  loveliness  of  the 
enormous  dome  above  her,  and  the  limitless 
expanse  of  not  less  lovely  earth  on  which 
that  dome  rested,  witnessed  to  the  Infinite 
Beauty  that  had  imagined  and  made  them. 
But  sooner  or  later  Mariquita  must  share, 
for  in  that  the  silent  tenderness  of  her  nature 
showed  itself:  she  could  not  be  content  to 
have  her  great  happiness  to  herself,  to  enjoy 
alone.  So,  presently,  in  her  prayer  she  came, 
as  always,  to  gathering  round  her  all  whom 

107 


MARIQUITA 

she  knew  and  all  whom  she  did  not  know. 
As  she  would  have  wished  them  to  think  in 
their  prayer  of  her,  so  must  she  have  them 
also  in  the  Divine  Presence  with  her,  lift 
their  names  up  to  God,  even  their  names 
which,  unknown  to  her,  He  knew  as  well 
as  He  knew  her  own. 

Her  living  father  and  her  dead  mother, 
the  old  school-friends  and  the  nuns,  the  old 
priest  at  Loretto,  and  a  certain  crooked  old 
gardener  that  had  been  there  (crooked  in 
body,  in  face,  and  in  temper),  Sarella,  and 
Mr.  Gore,  and  all  the  cowboys — all  these 
Mariquita  gathered  into  the  loving  arms  of 
her  memory,  and  presented  them  at  their 
Father's  feet.  Her  way  in  this  was  her  own 
way,  and  unlike  perhaps  that  of  others.  She 
had  no  idea  of  bringing  them  to  God's 
memory,  as  if  His  tenderness  needed  any 
reminder  from  her,  for  always  she  heard 
Him  saying:  "Can  you  teach  Me  pity  and 
love?"  She  did  not  think  it  depended  on 
her  that  good  should  come  to  them  from 
Him.  Were  she  to  be  lazy  or  forgetful,  He 
would  never  let  them  suffer  through  her 
neglect.  They  were  immeasurably  more 

1 08 


MARIQUITA 

His  than  they  could  be  hers.  But  she  could 
not  be  at  His  feet  and  not  in  her  loving  mind 
see  them  there  beside  her,  and  she  knew  He 
chose  that  at  His  feet  she  should  not  forget 
them.  She  could  not  dictate  to  Him  what 
He  was  to  give  them,  in  what  fashion  He 
should  bless  and  help  them.  He  knew  ex- 
actly. Her  surmises  must  be  ignorant. 

Therefore  Mariquita's  prayer  was  more 
wordless  than  common,  less  phrased;  but  its 
intensity  was  more  uncommon.  Nor  could 
it  be  limited  to  those — a  handful  out  of  all 
His  children — whom  she  knew  or  had  ever 
known.  There  were  all  the  rest — every- 
where: those  who  knew  how  to  serve  Him, 
and  were  doing  it,  as  she  had  never  learned 
to  serve;  those  who  had  never  heard  His 
name,  and  those  who  knew  it  but  shrank 
from  it  as  that  of  an  angry  observer;  those 
most  hapless  ones  who  lived  by  disobeying 
Him,  even  by  dragging  others  down  into 
the  slough  of  disobedience;  the  whole 
world's  sick,  body-sick  and  soul-sick;  those 
who  here  are  mad,  and  will  find  reason  only 
in  heaven;  the  whole  world's  sorrowful 
ones,  the  luckless,  those  gripped  in  the  hard 

109 


MARIQUITA 

clutch  of  penury,  or  the  sordid  clutch  of 
debt;  the  blind  whose  first  experience  of 
beauty  will  be  perfect  beauty,  the  foully 
diseased,  the  deformed,  the  deaf  and  dumb 
whose  first  speech  will  be  their  joining  in 
the  songs  of  heaven,  their  first  hearing  that 
of  the  music  of  heaven  ...  all  these,  and 
many,  many  others  she  must  bring  about 
her,  or  her  gladness  in  God's  nearness  would 
be  selfishness.  That  nearness!  she  felt  Him 
much  nearer  than  was  her  own  raiment, 
nearer  than  was  her  own  flesh. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

IT  was  long  after  Mariquita  had  come 
to  her  place  upon  the  bluff,  that  the 
sound  of  a  horse  cantering  towards  it 
made  her  rise  and  go  to  the  farther  west- 
ward edge  of  the  bluff  to  look.  The  horse- 
man was  quite  near,  below  her.  It  was  Gore, 
and  he  saw  her  at  the  same  moment  in 
which  she  saw  him.  He  lifted  his  big, 
wide-brimmed  hat  from  his  head  and  waved 
it.  It  would  never  have  even  occurred  to 
her  to  be  guilty  of  the  churlishness  of 
turning  away  to  go  homeward.  Her 
thoughts,  almost  the  only  thing  of  her  own 
she  had  ever  had,  she  was  always  ready  to 
lay  aside  for  courtesy. 

He  had  dismounted,  and  was  leading  his 
horse  up  the  rather  steep  slope.  She  stood 
waiting  for  him,  a  light  rather  than  a  smile 
upon  her  noble  face,  a  light  like  the  glow 
of  a  far  horizon.  .  .  . 

in 


MABIQUITA 

"I  thought,"  she  said,  when  he  had  come 
up,  "that  you  had  gone  to  Maxwell." 

"No,  I  went  to  Denver  this  time,"  he 
told  her,  "beyond  Denver  a  little.  Where 
do  you  think  I  heard  Mass  yesterday — this 
morning  again,  too?  for  both  of  us,  since 
you  could  not  come." 

"Not  at  Loretto!" 

But  she  knew  it  was  at  Loretto.  His 
.smile  told  her. 

"Yes,  at  Loretto.  It  was  the  same  to  me 
which  place  I  went  to.  No,  not  the  same, 
for  I  wanted  to  see  the  place  where  you 
had  been  a  little  girl,  so  that  I  could  come 
back  and  bring  you  word  of  it." 

"Ah,  how  kind  you  are!"  she  said,  with 
a  sort  of  wonder  of  gratefulness  shining  on 
her. 

("She  is  far  more  beautiful  than  I  ever 
knew,"  he  thought.) 

"Not  kind  at  all,"  Gore  protested.  "Just 
to  please  myself!  There's  no  great  kindness 
in  that  except  to  myself." 

"Oh,  yes!  for  you  knew  'how  it  would 
please  me.  It  was  wonderful  that  you  should 
be  so  kind  as  to  think  of  it." 

112 


MARIQUITA 

"It  gave  me  pleasure  anyway.  To  be  in 
the  place  where  you  had  been  so  happy — " 

"Ah,  but  I  am  always  happy,"  she  inter- 
rupted. "Though  indeed  I  was  happy 
there,  and  sorrowful  to  leave  it.  But  I  did 
not  leave  it  quite  behind;  it  came  with  me." 

"I  have  a  great  many  things  to  tell  you. 
They  remember  you  most  faithfully.  If  my 
going  gave  me  pleasure,  it  gave  them  much 
more.  You  cannot  think  how  much  they 
made  of  me  for  your  sake ;  I  stayed  there  a 
long  time  after  Mass  yesterday,  and  they 
made  me  go  back  in  the  afternoon — I  was 
there  all  afternoon.  And  all  the  time  we 
were  talking  of  you." 

"Then  I  think,"  Mariquita  declared, 
laughing  merrily,  "your  talk  will  have  been 


monotonous.5 


"Oh,  not  monotonous  at  all.  Are  they 
not  dear  women?  They  showed  me  where 
you  sat  in  chapel — and  the  different  places 
where  you  had  sat  in  classrooms,  and  in  the 
refectory,  when  you  first  came,  as  a  small 
girl  of  ten,  and  as  you  rose  in  the  school." 

"I  did  not  rise  very  high.  I  was  never 
one  of  the  clever  ones — " 

"3 


MARIQUITA 

"They  kept  that  to  themselves — " 

"Oh,  yes!  They  would  do  that.  Nuns 
are  so  charitable — they  woufd  never  say 
that  any  of  the  girls  was  stupid." 

"No,  they  didn't  hint  that  in  the  least. 
Sister  Gabriel  showed  me  a  drawing  of 
yours." 

"What  was  it?" 

"She  said  it  was  the  Grand  Canal  at 
(Venice.  I  have  never  been  there — " 

"Nor  I.  But  I  remember  doing  it  The 
water  wouldn't  come  flat.  It  looked  like  a 
blue  road  running  up-hill.  Sister  Gabriel 
was  very  kind,  very  kind  indeed.  She  used 
to  have  hay-fever." 

"So  she  has  now.  She  listened  for  more 
than  half-an-hour  while  I  told  her  about 
you." 

"Mr.  Gore,  I  think  you  will  have  been 
inventing  things  to  tell  her,"  Mariquita  pro- 
tested, laughing  again.  She  kept  laughing, 
for  happiness  and  pleasure. 

"Oh,  no!  On  the  contrary,  I  kept  for- 
getting things.  Afterwards  I  remembered 
some  of  them,  and  told  her  what  I  had  left 
out.  Some  I  only  remembered  when  it  was 

114 


MARIQUITA 

too  late,  after  I  had  come  away.  Sister 
Marie  Madeleine — I  hope  you  remember 
her  too — she  asked  hundreds  of  questions 
about  you." 

"Oh,  yes,  of  course  I  remember  her.   She 
taught  me  French.    And  I  was  stupid  about 


it 

1 L.         .        •         • 


"She  was  very  anxious  to  know  if  you 
kept  it  up.  She  said  you  wanted  only  prac- 
tice— and  vocabulary." 

"And  idiom,  and  grammar,  and  pronun- 
ciation," Mariquita  insisted,  laughing  very 
cheerfully.  "Did  you  tell  her  there  was  no 
one  to  keep  it  up  with?" 

He  told  her  of  many  others  of  the  nuns — 
he  had  evidently  taken  trouble  to  bring  her 
word  of  them  all.  And  he  had  asked  for 
news  of  the  girls  slhe  had  known  best,  and 
brought  her  news  of  them  also.  Several 
were  married,  two  had  entered  Holy  Re- 
ligion. 

"Sylvia  Markham,"  he  said,  "you  remem- 
ber her?  She  has  come  back  to  Loretto  to 
be  a  nun.  She  is  a  novice;  she  was  clothed 
at  Easter.  Sister  Mary  Scholastica  she  is — 
the  younger  children  call  her  Sister  Elastic." 


MARIQUITA 

"Oh,"  cried  Mariquita,  with  her  happy 
laugh,"  how  funny  it  is — to  hear  you  talking 
of  Sylvia.  She  was  harum-scarum.  What 
a  noise  she  used  to  make,  too!  How  pretty 
she  was!" 

"Sister  Elastic  is  just  as  pretty.  She  sent 
fifty  messages  to  you.  But  Nellie  Hurst — 
you  remember  her?" 

"Certainly  I  do.  She  was  champion  at 
baseball.  And  she  acted  better  than  any- 
body. Oh,  and  she  edited  the  Magazine, 
and  she  kept  us  all  laughing.  She  was 
funny!  Geraldine  Barnes  had  a  quinsy  and 
it  nearly  choked  her,  but  Nellie  Hurst  made 
her  laugh  so  much  that  it  burst,  and  she 
was  soon  well  again.  .  .  ." 

"Well,  and  where  do  you  think  she  is 
now?" 

"Where?"  Mariquita  asked  almost  breath- 
lessly. 

"In  California.  At  Santa  Clara,  near 
San  Jose.  She  is  a  Carmelite." 

"A  Carmelite!  And  she  used  to  say  she 
would  write  plays  (She  did  write  several 
that  were  acted  at  Loretto)  and  act  them 
herself — on  the  stage,  I  mean." 

116 


MARIQUITA 

It  took  Gore  a  long  time  to  tell  all  hi« 
budget  of  news;  he  had  hardly  finished 
before  they  reached  the  homestead,  towards 
which  the  sinking  sun  had  long  warned 
them  to  be  moving.  And  he  had  presents 
for  her,  a  rosary  ("brought  by  Mother 
General  from  Rome  and  blessed  by  the 
Pope,")  a  prayerbook,  a  lovely  Agnus  Dei 
covered  with  White  satin  and  beautifully 
embroidered,  scapulars,  a  little  bottle  of 
Lourdes  water,  another  of  ordinary  holy 
water,  and  a  little  hanging  stoup  to  put  some 
of  it  in,  also  a  statue  of  Our  Lady,  and  a 
small  framed  print  of  the  Holy  House  of 
Loretto. 

Mariquita  had  never  owned  so  many 
things  in  her  life. 

"Oh,  dear!"  she  said.  "And  I  had  been 
long  thinking  that  I  was  quite  forgotten 
there;  I  am  ashamed.  And  you — how  to 
thank  you!" 

"But  you  have  been  thanking  me  all  the 
time,"  he  said,  "ever  since  I  told  you  where 
I  had  been.  Every  time  you  laughed  you 
thanked  me." 

They  met  Ben  Sturt,  who  was  lounging 

117 


MARIQUITA 

about  by  the  gate  in  the  homestead  fence; 
he  had  never  seen  Mariquita  with  just  that 
light  of  happiness  upon  her. 

"Here,"  he  said  to  Gore,  "let  me  take  the 
horse;  I'll  see  to  him." 

He  knew  that  Mariquita  would  not  come 
to  the  stables,  and  he  wanted  Gore  to  be 
free  to  stay  with  her  to  the  last  moment. 

As  he  led  the  horse  away  he  thought  to 
himself:  "It  has  really  begun  at  last;"  and 
he  loyally  wished  his  friend  good  luck. 

Within  a  yard  or  two  of  the  door  they 
met  Don  Joaquin. 

"Father,"  she  said  at  once,  "Mr.  Gore 
didn't  go  to  Maxwell  this  time.  He  went 
all  the  way  to  Denver — to  Loretto.  And 
see  what  a  lot  of  presents  he  has  brought 
me  from  them!" 

Gore  thought  she  looked  adorable  as,  like 
a  child  unused  to  gifts,  she  showed  her  little 
treasures  to  the  rather  grim  old  prairie  dog. 

He  looked  less  grim  than  usual.  It  suited 
him  that  she  should  be  so  pleased. 

"Well!"  he  said,  "you're  stocked  now. 
Mr.  Gore  had  a  long  ride  to  fetch  them." 

118 


MARIQUITA 

"Oh,  yesl  Did  you  ever  hear  of  any- 
body being  so  kind?" 

Her  father  noted  shrewdly  the  new 
expression  of  grateful  pleasure  on  her  face. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  Gore  was  not  so  in- 
competent as  he  had  been  supposing,  to 
carry  on  his  campaign.  Sarella  came  out 
and  joined  them.  "What  a  cunning  little 
pin-cushion  1"  she  exclaimed.  "Isn't  it  just 
sweet?"  The  Agnus  Dei  was  almost  the 
only  one  of  Mariquita's  new  treasures  to 
which  she  could  assign  a  use. 

"Oh,  and  the  necklace!  Garnets  relieved 
by  those  crystal  blobs  are  just  the  very 
fashion." 

"It  is  a  rosary,"  Don  Joaquin  explained 
in  a  rather  stately  tone.  It  made  him  uneasy 
-it  must  be  unlucky — to  hear  these  frivol- 
ous eulogies  applied  to  "holy  objects"  with 
which  personally  he  had  never  had  the 
familiarity  that  diminishes  awe. 

Mariquita  had  plenty  to  do  indoors  and 
did  not  linger.  Gore  went  in  also  to  wash 
and  tidy  himself  after  his  immensely  long 
ride. 

Sarella,  who  of  course  knew  long  before 

119 


MARIQUITA 

this  where  Mariquita  had  received  her  edu- 
cation, and  had  been  told  whence  these 
pious  gifts  came,  smiled  as  she  turned  to 
Don  Joaquin. 

"So  Gore  rode  all  the  way  to  Denver  this 
time,"  she  remarked. 

"It  is  beyond  Denver.  Mariquita  was 
pleased  to  hear  news  of  her  old  friends." 

"Oh,  I  daresay.  Gore  is  not  such  a  fool 
as  he  looks." 

"I  am  not  thinking  that  he  looks  a  fool  at 
all,"  said  Don  Joaquin,  more  stately  than 
ever. 

("How  Spanish!"  thought  Sarella,  "I 
suppose  they're  born  solemn.") 

"Indeed,"  she  cheerfully  agreed,  "nor  do 
I.  He  wouldn't  be  so  handsome  if  he  looked 
silly.  He's  all  sense.  And  he  knows  his 
road,  short  cuts  *uid  all." 

Don  Joaquin  disliked  her  mention  of 
Gore's  good  looks,  as  she  intended.  She 
had  no  idea  of  b^ing  snubbed  by  her  elderly 
suitor. 

"Mariquita,"  he  laid  down,  "will  think 
more  of  his  good  sense  than  of  his  appear- 

120 


MARIQUITA 

ance.  I  have  not  brought  her  up  to  consider 
a  gentleman's  looks." 

Sarella  laughed;  she  was  not  an  easy 
person  to  "down." 

"But  you  didn't  bring  me  up,"  she  said, 
"and  I  can  tell  you  that  you  might  have 
been  as  wise  as  Solomon  and  it  wouldn't 
have  mattered  to  me  if  you  had  been  ugly. 
I'd  rather  look  than  listen  any  day;  and  I 
like  to  have  something  worth  looking  at." 

Her  very  pretty  eyes  were  turned  full  on 
her  mature  admirer's  face,  and  he  did  not 
dislike  their  flattery.  An  elderly  man  who 
has  been  very  handsome  is  not  often  dis- 
pleased at  being  told  he  is  worth  looking  at 
still. 

"So  do  I,  Sarellita,"  he  responded,  telling 
himself  (and  her)  how  much  pleasure  there 
was  in  looking  at  her. 

Stately  he  could  not  help  being,  but  his 
manner  had  now  no  stiffness;  and  in  the 
double  diminutive  of  her  name  there  was 
almost  a  tenderness,  a  nearer  approach  to 
tenderness  than  she  could  understand.  She 
could  understand,  however,  that  he  was 
more  lover-like  than  he  had  ever  been. 

121 


MARIQUITA 

A  slight  flush  of  satisfaction  (that  he  took 
for  maiden  shyness)  was  on  her  face,  as  she 
looked  up  under  her  half-drooped  eyelids. 

"Perhaps,"  he  said  in  much  lower  tones 
£han  he  usually  employed,  "perhaps  Mr. 
Gore  knows  what  you  call  his  road  better 
than  I.  But  he  does  not  know  better  the 
goal  he  wants  to  reach." 

("Say!"  Sarella  asked  herself,  "what's 
coming?") 

Two  of  the  cowboys  were  coming — had 
come  in  fact.  They  appeared  at  that 
moment  round  the  corner  of  the  house, 
ready  for  supper. 

"So,"  one  of  them  said,  with  rather  loud 
irritation,  evidently  concluding  a  story,  "my 
dad  married  her,  and  I  have  a  step-ma 
younger  than  myself — >n 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

EVERYONE  on  the  range,  from  its 
owner  down  to  old  Jack,  considered 
that  Gore  made  much  more  way  after 
his  trip  to  Denver.  Mariquita,  it  was  de- 
cided, had,  as  it  were,  awakened  to  him.  It 
was  believed  that  she  and  he  saw  more  of 
each  other,  and  that  she  liked  his  company. 

Sarella  thought  things  were  going  so  well 
that  they  had  much  better  be  left  to  them- 
selves, and  this  view  she  strongly  impressed 
upon  Don  Joaquin.  He  had  gradually  come 
to  hold  a  higher  opinion  of  her  sense ;  at  first 
he  had  been  attracted  entirely  by  her  beauty. 
Her  aunt  had  not  been  remarkable  for 
intelligence,  and  he  had  not  thought  the 
niece  could  be  expected  to  be  wiser  than 
her  departed  elder. 

Sarella,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not  think 
her  admirer  quite  so  sensible  as  he  really 
was.  That  he  was  shrewd  and  successful  in 
business,  She  knew,  but  was  the  less  im- 

123 


MARIQUITA 

pressed  that  his  methods  had  been  slow  and 
unhurried.  To  her  eastern  ideas  there  was 
nothing  imposing  (though  extremely  com- 
fortable) in  a  moderate  wealth  accumulated 
by  thirty  years  of  patient  work  and  stingy 
expenditure.  But  she  was  sure  he  did  not 
in  the  least  understand  his  own  daughter, 
in  whom  she  (who  did  not  understand  her 
any  better  than  she  would  have  understood 
Dante's  Divina  Commedia)  saw  nothing  at 
all  difficult  to  understand.  The  truth  was 
that  Don  Joaquin  had  never  understood  any 
woman;  without  imagination,  he  could 
understand  no  sex  but  his  own — and  his 
experience  of  women  was  of  the  narrowest. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  nearer  to  a  sort  of 
rough,  nebulous  perception  of  his  daughter 
than  was  Sarella  herself. 

His  saying  that  Mariquita  would  not 
"consider"  Gore's  good  looks,  a  remark  that 
Sarella  thought  merely  ridiculous,  was  an 
illustration  of  this.  In  his  explicit  mind,  in 
his  conscious  attitude  towards  Mariquita,  he 
assumed  that  it  was  her  business  and  duty  to 
respect  him.  He  was  her  parent,  so  placed 
by  God,  and  he  had  a  great  and  sincere 

124 


MARIQUITA 

reverence  for  such  Divine  appointments  as 
placed  himself  in  a  condition  of  superiority. 
(Insubordination  or  insolence  in  the  cow- 
boys would  have  gravely  and  honestly  scan- 
dalized him).  All  the  same,  in  an  inner 
mind  that  he  never  consulted,  and  whose  in- 
struction he  was  far  from  seeking,  he  knew 
that  his  daughter  was  a  higher  creature  than 
himself;  all  he  knew  that  he  knew  was  that 
a  young  girl  was  necessarily  more  innocent 
and  pure  than  an  elderly  man  could  be  (he 
himself  was  no  profligate) ;  that  in  fact  all 
women  were  more  religious  than  men,  and 
that  it  behooved  them  to  be  so;  nature  made 
it  easier  for  them. 

He  had  after  deliberate  consideration 
decided  that  it  would  be  convenient  and 
suitable  that  his  daughter  should  marry 
Gore;  the  young  man,  he  was  sure,  wished 
it,  and,  while  the  circumstances  in  which 
she  was  placed  held  little  promise  of  a  wide 
choice  of  husbands  for  her,  he  would,  in 
Don  Joaquin's  opinion,  make  a  quite  suit- 
able husband.  To  do  him  justice,  he  would 
never  have  manoeuvred  to  bring  Gore  into 
a  marriage  with  Mariquita,  had  he  ap- 

125 


MARIQUITA 

peared  indifferent  to  the  girl,  or  had  he 
seemed  in  any  way  unfit. 

But,  though  Don  Joaquin  had  reached  the 
point  of  intending  the  marriage,  he  saw  no 
occasion  for  much  love-making,  and  none 
ifor  Mariquita's  falling  in  love  with  the 
young  man's  handsome  face  and  fine  figure. 
Her  business  was  to  learn  that  her  father 
approved  the  young  man  as  a  suitor,  and  to 
recognize  that  that  approval  stamped  him 
as  suitable.  That  Mariquita  would  not  sud- 
denly learn  this  lesson,  Sarella  had  partly 
convinced  him;  but  he  did  not  think  there 
would  now  be  any  suddenness  in  the  matter., 
He  would  have  spoken  with  authoritative 
plainness  to  her  now,  without  further  de- 
lay; but  there  was  a  difficulty — Gore  had 
not  spoken  to  him. 

Don  Joaquin  thought  it  was  about  time 
he  did  so. 

"You  think,"  he  remarked  when  they 
were  alone  together  over  the  fire,  "that  you 
shall  buy  Elaine's?" 

Now  Gore  would  certainly  not  buy  a 
range  so  near  Don  Joaquin's  if  he  should 
fail  to  secure  a  mistress  for  it  in  Don 

126 


MARIQUITA 

Joaquin's  daughter.  And  he  was  by  no 
means  inclined  to  take  success  with  her  for 
granted.  He  was  beginning  to  hope  that 
there  was  a  chance  of  success — that  was  all. 

"It  is  worth  the  money,"  he  answered; 
"and  I  have  the  money.  But  I  have  not 
absolutely  decided  to  settle  down  to  this  way 
of  life  at  all." 

"I  thought  you  had." 

"Well,  no.  It  must  depend  on  what  does 
not  depend  upon  myself." 

Don  Joaquin  found  this  enigmatical, 
which  Gore  might  or  might  not  have  in- 
tended that  he  should.  Though  wholly 
uncertain  how  Mariquita  might  regard  him 
when  she  came  to  understand  that  he  wished 
for  more  than  friendship,  he  was  by  this 
time  quite  aware  that  her  father  approved; 
and  he  was  particularly  anxious  that  she 
should  not  be  "bothered." 

Don  Joaquin  diplomatically  hinted  that 
Elaine  might  close  with  some  other  offer. 

!<There  is  no  other  offer.  He  told  me  so 
quite  straightforwardly.  I  have  the  refusal. 
If  he  does  get  another  offer,  and  I  have  not 
decided,  he  is  of  course  quite  free  to  accept 

127 


MARIQUITA 

it.  He  does  not  want  to  hurry  me ;  I  expect 
he  knows  that  if  I  did  buy,  he  would  get  a 
better  price  from  me  than  from  anyone 
else." 

Gore  might  very  reasonably  be  tired  after 
his  immensely  long  ride,  and  when  he  went 
off  to  bed  Don  Joaquin  could  not  feel 
aggrieved.  But  he  was  hardly  pleased  by 
the  idea  that  the  young  man  intended  to 
manage  his  own  affairs  without  discussion 
of  them,  and  to  keep  his  own  counsel. 


128 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

r  r  IT  UST  you   leave  well    alone,"   said 
Sarella,  a  little  more  didactically 
**     than     Don     Joaquin     cared     for. 
"Things  are  going  as  well  as  can  be  expect- 
ed" (and  here  she  laughed  a  little) ;  "they're 
moving  now." 

Don  Joaquin  urged  his  opinion  that 
Mariquita  ought  to  be  enlightened  as  to  his 
approval  of  her  suitor. 

Sarella  answered,  with  plain  impatience, 
"If  you  tell  her  she  has  a  suitor  she  won't 
have  one.  Don't  you  pry  her  eyes  open  with 
your  thumb ;  let  them  open  of  themselves." 

Don  Joaquin  only  half  understood  this 
rhetoric,  and  he  seldom  liked  what  he  could 
not  understand. 

He  adopted  a  slightly  primitive  measure 
in  reprisal — 

"It  isn't,"  he  remarked  pregnantly,  "as 
if  the  young  man  were  not  a  Catholic — I 

129 


MARIQUITA 

would  not  allow  her  to  marry  him  if  he 
were  not." 

"No?" 

And  it  was  quite  clear  to  Don  Joaquin 
that  he  had  killed  two  birds  with  one  stone; 
he  saw  that  Sarella  was  both  interested  and 
impressed. 

"Catholics  should  marry  Catholics,"  he 
declared  with  decision. 

"You  didn't  think  so  always,"  Sarella 
observed,  smiling. 

"If  I  forgot  it,  I  suffered  for  it,"  her 
elderly  admirer  retorted. 

Sarella  was  puzzled.  She  naturally  had 
not  the  remotest  suspicion  that  he  had  felt 
his  wife's  early  death  as  a  reprisal  on  the 
part  of  Heaven.  She  knew  little  of  her 
aunt,  and  less  of  that  aunt's  married  life. 
Had  there  been  quarrels  about  religion? 

"Well,  I  daresay  you  may  be  right,"  she 
said  gravely.  "Two  religions  in  one  house 
may  lead  to  awkwardness." 

"Yes.  That  is  so,"  he  agreed,  with  a  com- 
pleteness of  conviction  that  considerably 
enlightened  her. 

"And  after  all,"  she  went  on,  smiling  with 

130 


MARIQUITA 

great  sweetness,  "they're  only  two  branches 
of  the  same  religion." 

This  was  her  way  of  hinting  that  the  little 
bird  he  had  married  would  have  been  wise 
to  hop  from  her  own  religious  twig  to  his. 

This  suggestion,  however,  Don  Joaquin 
utterly  repudiated. 

"The  same  religion  1"  he  said,  with  an 
energy  that  almost  made  Sarella  jump. 
"The  Catholic  Church  and  heresy  all  one 
religion!  Black  and  white  the  same  color!" 

Sarella  was  now  convinced  that  he  and 
his  wife  had  fought  on  the  subject.  On 
such  matters  she  was  quite  resolved  there 
should  be  no  fighting  in  her  case;  concern- 
ing expenditure  it  might  be  necessary  to 
fight.  But  Sarella  was  an  easy  person  who 
had  no  love  for  needless  warfare,  and  she 
made  up  her  mind  at  once. 

"I  understand,  now  you  put  it  that  way," 
she  said  amiably,  "you're  right  again.  Both 
can't  be  right,  and  the  husband  is  the  head 
of  the  wife." 

Don  Joaquin  accepted  this  theory  whole- 
heartedly, and  nodded  approvingly. 


MARIQUITA 

"How,"  he  said,  "can  a  Protestant  mother 
bring  up  her  Catholic  son?" 

Sarella  laughed  inwardly.  So  he  had 
guite  arranged  the  sex  of  his  future  family. 

"But,"  she  said  with  a  remarkably  swift 
riposte,  "if  Catholics  should  not  marry 
Protestants,  they  have  no  business  to  make 
love  to  them.  Have  they?" 

Her  Catholic  admirer  looked  a  little  silly, 
and  she  swore  to  herself  that  he  was 
blushing. 

"Because,"  she  continued,  entirely  with- 
out blushing,  "a  Catholic  gentleman  made 
love  to  me  once — " 

"Perhaps,"  suggested  Don  Joaquin,  re- 
covering himself  "he  hoped  you  would  be- 
come a  Catholic,  if  you  accepted  him." 

"I  daresay,"  Sarella  agreed  very  cheer- 
fully. 

"But  you  evidently  did  not  accept  him." 
"As  to  that,"  she  explained  frankly,  "he 
did  not  go  quite  so  far  as  asking  me  to  marry 
him." 

"He  drew  back!" 

"Not  exactly.    He  was  interrupted." 

132 


MARIQUITA 

"But  didn't  he  resume  the  subject?" 

Sarella  laughed. 

"I'd  rather  not  answer  that  question,"  she 
answered;  "you're  asking  quite  a  few  ques- 
tions, aren't  you?" 

"I  want  to  ask  another.  Did  you  like  that 
Catholic  gentleman  well  enough  to  share 
all  he  had,  his  religion,  his  name,  and  his 
home?" 

Don  Joaquin  was  not  laughing,  on  the 
contrary,  he  was  eagerly  serious,  and  Sarella 
laughed  no  more. 

"He  never  did  ask  me  to  share  them,"  she 
replied  with  a  self-possession  that  her 
elderly  lover  admired  greatly. 

"But  he  does.  He  is  asking  you.  Sarellay 
will  you  share  my  religion,  and  my  name, 
my  home,  and  all  that  I  have?" 

Even  now  she  was  amused  inwardly,  not 
all  caused  by  love.  She  noted,  and  was  en- 
tertained by  noting,  how  he  put  first  among 
things  she  was  to  share,  his  religion- 
because  he  was  not  so  sure  of  her  willing- 
ness to  share  that  as  of  her  readiness  to 
share  his  name  and  his  goods,  and  meant 
to  be  sure,  as  she  now  quite  understood.  It 

133 


MARIQUITA 

did  not  make  her  respect  him  less.  She  had 
the  sense  to  know  that  he  would  not  make 
a  worse  husband  for  caring  enough  for  his 
religion  to  make  a  condition  of  it,  and  she 
was  grateful  for  the  form  in  which  he  put 
the  condition.  He  spared  her  the  brutality 
of,  "I  will  marry  you  if  you  will  turn 
Catholic  to  marry  me,  but  I  won't  if  you 
refuse  to  do  that." 

She  smiled  again,  but  not  lightly.  "I 
think,"  she  said,  "you  will  need  some  one 
when  Mariquita  goes  away  to  a  home  of  her 
own.  And  I  think  I  could  make  you  com- 
fortable and  happy.  I  will  try,  anyway. 
And  it  would  never  make  you  happy  and 
comfortable  if  we  were  of  different  re- 
ligions. If  my  husband's  is  good  enough  for 
him,  it  must  be  good  enough  for  me." 

Poor  Sarella!  She  was  quite  homeless, 
and  quite  penniless.  She  had  not  come  here 
with  any  idea  of  finding  a  husband  in  this 
elderly  Spaniard,  but  she  could  think  of 
him  as  a  husband,  with  no  repugnance  and 
with  some  satisfaction.  He  was  respectable 
and  trustworthy;  she  believed  him  to  be  as 
fond  of  her  as  it  was  in  his  nature  to  be 


fond  of  anybody.  He  had  prudence  and 
good  sense.  And  his  admiration  pleased 
her;  her  own  sense  told  her  that  she  would 
get  in  marrying  him  as  much  as  she  could 
expect. 

"Shall  you  tell  Mariquita,  or  shall  I?" 
she  inquired  before  they  parted. 

"I  will  tell  her.  I  am  her  father,"  he 
replied. 

"Then,  do  not  say  anything  about  her 
moving  off  to  a  home  of  her  own — " 

"Why  not?"  he  asked  with  some  obstinacy. 
For  in  truth  he  had  thought  the  opportunity 
would  be  a  good  one  for  "breaking  ground." 

"Because  she  will  think  we  want  to  get 
rid  of  her;  or  she  will  think  /  do.  Tell  her,, 
instead,  that  I  will  do  my  best  to  make  her 
happy  and  comfortable.  If  I  were  you,  I 
should  tell  her  you  count  on  our  marriage 
making  it  pleasanter  for  her  here." 


135 


CHAPTER  XX. 

WHEN  her  father  informed  her  of 
his  intended  marriage,  Mariquita 
was  much  more  taken  aback  than 
he  had  foreseen.  He  had  supposed  she 
must  have  observed  more  or  less  what 
was  coming. 

"Marry  Sarella,  father!"  she  exclaimed, 
too  thoroughly  astonished  to  weigh  her 
words,  "but  you  are  her  uncle!" 

Don  Joaquin,  who  was  pale  enough 
ordinarily,  reddened  angrily. 

"I  am  no  relation  whatever  to  her,"  he 
protested  fiercely.  "How  dare  you  accuse 
your  father  of  wishing  to  marry  his  own 
niece?  How  dare  you  insult  Sarella  by 
supposing  she  would  marry  her  uncle?" 

It  was  terrible  to  Mariquita  to  see  her 
father  so  furious.  He  had  never  been  soft 
or  tender  to  her,  but  he  had  hardly  ever 
shown  any  anger  towards  her,  and  now  he 
looked  at  her  as  if  he  disliked  her. 

136 


MARIQUITA 

It  did  astonish  her  that  Sarella  should  be 
willing  to  marry  her  uncle.  Sarella  had 
indeed,  as  Don  Joaquin  had  not,  thought  of 
the  difficulty;  but  she  saw  that  there  ap- 
peared to  be  none  to  him ;  no  doubt,  he  knew 
what  was  the  marriage-law  among  Catho- 
lics, and  perhaps  that  was  why  he  was  so 
insistent  as  to  her  being  one. 

"I  know,"  Mariquita  said  gently,  "that 
there  is  no  blood  relationship  between  her 
and  you.  She  is  my  first  cousin,  but  she  is 
only  your  niece  by  marriage.  I  do  not  even 
know  what  the  Church  lays  down." 

Her  father  was  still  angry  with  her,  but 
he  was  startled  as  well.  He  did  not  know 
any  better  than  herself  what  the  Church 
laid  down.  He  did  know  that  between  him 
and  Sarella  there  was  no  real  relationship — 
in  the  law  of  nature  there  was  nothing  to 
bar  their  marriage,  and  he  had  acted  in 
perfect  good  faith.  But  he  did  not  intend 
to  break  the  Church's  law  again. 

"If  you  are  ignorant  of  the  Church's 
law,"  he  said  severely,  "you  should  not  talk 
as  if  you  knew  it." 

137 


She  knew  she  had  not  so  talked,  but  she 
made  no  attempt  to  excuse  herself. 

"It  is,"  she  said  quietly,  "quite  easy  to 
find  out.  The  priest  at  Maxwell  would  tell 
you  immediately." 

She  saw  that  her  father,  though  still 
frowning  heavily,  was  not  entirely  disre- 
gardful  of  her  suggestion. 

"Father,"  she  went  on  in  a  low  gentle 
tone,  "I  beg  your  pardon  if,  being  alto- 
gether surprised,  I  spoke  suddenly,  and 
seemed  disrespectful." 

"You  were  very  disrespectful,"  he  said, 
with  stiff  resentment. 

Mariquita's  large  grave  eyes  were  full  of 
tears,  but  he  did  not  notice  them,  and  would 
have  been  unmoved  if  he  had  seen  them. 
It  was  difficult  for  her  to  keep  them  from 
overflowing,  and  more  difficult  to  go  on 
with  what  she  wished  to  say. 

"You  know,"  she  said,  "that  there  are 
things  which  the  Church  does  not  allow 
except  upon  conditions,  but  does  allow  on 
conditions — " 

"What  things?" 

138 


MARIQUITA 

"For  instance,  marriage  with  a  person 
who  is  not  a  Catholic — " 

Don  Joaquin  received  a  sudden  illumina- 
tion. Yes!  With  a  dispensation  that  would 
have  been  dutiful  which  he  had  done  un- 
dutifully  without  one. 

"You  think  a  dispensation  can  be  obtained 
in — in  this  case." 

"Father,"  she  answered  almost  in  a 
whisper,  "I  am  quite  ignorant  about  it." 

He  had  severely  reprimanded  her  for 
speaking,  being  ignorant.  Now  he  wanted 
encouragement  and  ordered  her  to  speak. 

"But  say  what  you  think,"  he  said 
dictatorially. 

"As  there  is  no  real  relationship,"  she 
answered,  courageously  enough  after  her 
former  snubbing,  "if  such  a  marriage  is  for- 
bidden" (he  scowled  blackly,  but  she  went 
on) ,  "it  cannot  be  so  by  the  law  of  God,  but 
by  the  law  of  the  Church.  She  cannot  give 
anyone  permission  to  disregard  God's  law, 
but  she  can,  I  suppose,  make  exception  to 
her  own  law.  That  is  what  we  call  a  dis- 
pensation. God  does  not  forbid  the  use  of 
meat  on  certain  days,  but  she  does.  If  God 

139 


MARIQUITA 

forbade  it  she  could  never  give  leave  for  it; 
but  she  often  gives  leave — not  only  to  a  cer- 
tain person,  but  to  a  whole  diocese,  or  a 
whole  country  even,  for  temporary  reasons 
— what  we  call  a  dispensation." 

Don  Joaquin  had  listened  carefully.  He 
was  much  more  ignorant  of  ecclesiastical 
matters  than  his  daughter.  He  had  never 
occupied  himself  with  considering  the 
reasons  behind  ecclesiastical  regulations, 
and  much  that  he  heard  now  came  like  en- 
tirely new  knowledge.  But  he  was  Spaniard 
enough  to  understand  logic  very  readily, 
and  he  did  understand  Mariquita. 

"So,"  he  queried  eagerly,  "you  think  that 
even  if  such  a  marriage  is  against  regula- 
tion" (he  would  not  say  "forbidden"), 
"there  might  be  a  dispensation?" 

"I  do  not  see  why  there  should  not." 

"Of  course,  there  is  no  reason,"  he  said 
loftily,  adding  with  ungracious  ingratitude, 
"and  it  was  extremely  out  of  place  for  you 
to  look  shocked  when  I  told  you  of  my  pur- 
pose." 

Mariquita  accepted  this  further  reproof 
meekly.  Don  Joaquin  was  only  asserting 

140 


MARIQUITA 

his  dignity,  that  had  lain  a  little  in  abeyance 
While  he  was  listening  to  her  explanations. 

"I  shall  have  to  be  away  all  to-morrow," 
he  said,  "on  business.  I  do  not  wish  you  to 
say  anything  to  Sarella  till  I  give  you 
permission." 

"Of  course  not." 

Don  Joaquin  was  not  addicted  to  telling 
fibs — except  business  ones;  in  selling  a  horse 
he  regarded  them  as  merely  the  floral 
ornaments  of  a  bargain,  which  would  have 
an  almost  indecent  nakedness  without  them. 
But  on  this  occasion  he  stooped  to  a  mod- 
erate prevarication. 

"Sarella,"  he  confidentially  informed  that 
lady,  "I  shall  be  up  before  sunrise  and  away 
the  whole  of  to-morrow.  Sometime  the  day 
after  I  shall  have  a  good  chance  of  telling 
Mariquita.  Don't  you  hint  anything  to  her 
meanwhile." 

"Not  I,"  Sarella  promised. 

("A  hitch  somewhere,"  she  thought,  feel- 
ing pretty  sure  that  he  had  spoken  to  Mari- 
quita already.) 

When  Don  Joaquin,  after  his  return  from 
Maxwell,  spoke  to  Mariquita  again,  he  once 

141 


MARIQUITA 

more  condescended  to  some  half-truthful- 
ness— necessary,  as  he  considered,  to  that 
great  principle  of  diplomacy — the  balance 
of  power.  A  full  and  plain  explanation  of 
the  exact  position  would,  he  thought,  unduly 
exalt  his  daughter's  wisdom  and  foresight 
at  the  expense  of  his  own. 

"The  priest,"  he  informed  her,  "will,  of 
course,  be  very  pleased  to  marry  Sarella  and 
myself  when  we  are  ready.  That  will  not 
be  until  she  has  been  instructed  and  bap- 
tized. It  will  not  be  for  a  month  or  two." 

Mariquita  offered  her  respectful  con- 
gratulations both  on  Sarella's  willingness  to 
become  a  Catholic,  and  on  the  marriage 
itself.  She  was  little  given  to  asking  ques- 
tions, and  was  quite  aware  that  her  father 
had  no  wish  to  answer  any  in  the  present 
instance. 

Neither  did  he  tell  Sarella  that  a  dispen- 
sation would  be  necessary;  still  less,  that  the 
priest  believed  the  dispensation  would  have 
to  be  sought,  through  the  Bishop,  of  course, 
from  the  Papal  Delegate,  and  professed 
himself  even  uncertain  whether  the  Papal 
Delegate  himself  might  not  refer  to  Rome 

142 


MARIQUITA 

before  granting  it,  though  he  (the  priest) 
thought  it  more  probable  that  His  Excel- 
lency would  grant  the  dispensation  without 
such  reference. 

Don  Joaquin  merely  gave  'Sarella  to 
understand  that  their  marriage  would  follow 
her  reception  into  the  Church,  and  that  the 
necessary  instruction  previous  to  that  recep- 
tion would  take  some  time, 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

AS  the  marriage  could  not  take  place 
without  delay,  Don  Joaquin  did  not 
wish    it    to    be    unreservedly    an- 
nounced;   the   general    inhabitants   of   the 
range  might  guess  what  they  chose,  but  they 
were  not  at  present  to  be  informed. 

"Mariquita  may  tell  Gore,"  he  explained 
to  Sarella,  "that  is  a  family  matter." 

"And  I  am  sure  she  will  not  tell  him 
unless  you  order  her  to,"  said  Sarella;  "she 
does  not  think  of  him  in  that  light." 

"What  light?"  demanded  Don  Joaquin 
irritably. 

"As  one  of  the  family,"  Sarella  replied, 
without  any  irritation  at  all.  Her  placidity 
of  temper  was  likely  to  be  one  of  her  most 
convenient  endowments. 

"I  shall  give  her  to  understand,"  said  Don 
Joaquin,  "that  there  is  no  restriction  on  her 
informing  Mr.  Gore." 

144 


MARIQUITA 

Sarella  shrugged  her  pretty  shoulders  and 
made  no  comment. 

Mariquita  took  her  father's  intimation  as 
an  order  and  obeyed,  though  surprised  that 
he  should  not,  if  he  desired  Mr.  Gore  to 
know  of  his  approaching  marriage,  tell  him 
himself.  Possibly,  she  thought,  her  father 
was  a  little  shy  about  such  a  subject. 

Mr.  Gore  received  her  announcement 
quite  coolly,  without  any  manifestation  of 
surprise.  It  had  not,  as  Don  Joaquin  had 
hoped  it  might,  the  least  effect  of  hurrying 
his  own  steps. 

"Am  I,"  he  inquired,  "supposed  to  show 
that  I  have  been  told?" 

"Oh,  I  think  so." 

So  that  night  when  they  were  alone,  after 
the  others  had  gone  to  their  rooms,  Gore 
congratulated  his  host. 

"Thank  you!  You  see,"  said  Don 
Joaquin,  assuming  a  tone  of  pathos  that  sat 
most  queerly  on  him,  "as  time  goes  on,  I 
should  be  very  lonely." 

He  shook  his  head  sadly,  and  Gore  en- 
deavored to  look  duly  sympathetic. 

"Sarella,"    the    older    man    proceeded, 


MARIQUITA 

"could  not  stop  here — if  she  were  not  my 
wife — after  Mariquita  had  left  us." 

Gore,  who  perfectly  understood  Mari- 
quita's  father  and  his  diplomacy,  would  not 
indulge  him  by  asking  if  his  daughter  were, 
then,  likely  to  leave  him. 

So  Don  Joaquin  sighed  and  had  to  go  on. 

"Yes!  It  would  be  very  lonely  for  me, 
dependent  as  I  am  for  society  on  Mari- 
quita." 

Here  Gore,  with  some  inward  amusement, 
could  not  refrain  from  accusing  his  possible 
father-in-law  of  some  hypocrisy;  for  he  was 
sure  the  elderly  gentleman  would  miss  his 
daughter  as  little  as  any  father  could  miss 
his  child. 

"Certainly,"  he  said  aloud,  "it  is  hard  to 
think  how  the  range  would  get  on  without 
her." 

No  doubt,  her  absence  would  be  hard  to 
fill  in  the  matter  of  usefulness,  and  Gore 
was  inclined  to  doubt  whether  Sarella 
would  even  wish  to  fill  it.  He  was  pretty 
sure  that  that  young  woman  would  refuse 
to  work  as  her  cousin  had  worked. 

"It    must   get   on    without    her,"    Don 

546 


MARIQUITA 

Joaquin  agreed,  not  without  doubt,  "when 
her  time  comes  for  moving  to  a  home  of 
her  own." 

Still  Gore  refused  to  "rise." 

"We  must  be  prepared  for  that,"  Mari- 
quita's  father  went  on,  refilling  his  pipe. 
"She  is  grown  up.  It  is  natural  she  should 
be  thinking  of  her  own  future — " 

Gore  suddenly  felt  angry  with  him,  in- 
stead of  being  merely  amused.  To  him  it 
appeared  a  profanation  of  the  very  idea  of 
Mariquita,  to  speak  of  her  as  indulging  in 
surmises  and  calculations  concerning  her 
own  matrimonial  chances. 

"It  would  not,"  he  said,  "be  unnatural— 
but  I  am  sure  her  mind  is  given  to  no  such 
thoughts." 

Don  Joaquin  slightly  elevated  his  eye- 
brows. 

"I  do  not  know,"  he  said  coldly,  "how 
you  can  answer  for  what  her  mind  is  given 
to.  I,  at  any  rate,  must  have  such  thoughts 
on  'her  account.  I  am  not  English.  English 
parents  may,  perhaps,  leave  all  such  things 
to  chance.  We,  of  my  people,  are  not  so. 
To  us  it  seems  the  most  important  of  his 


MARIQUITA 

duties  for  a  father  to  trust  to  no  chances, 
but  arrange  and  provide  for  his  daughter's 
settlement  in  life." 

Here!  the  old  fellow  paused,  and  having 
shot  his  bolt,  pretended  it  had  been  a  mere 
parenthesis  in  answer  to  an  implied 
criticism. 

"But,"  he  continued,  "I  have  wandered 
from  what  I  was  really  explaining.  I  was 
telling  that  soon  I  should,  in  the  natural 
course  of  things,  be  left  here  alone,  as  re- 
gards home  companionship,  unless  I  myself 
tried  to  find  a  mate,  so  I  tried  and  I  have 
succeeded." 

Here  he  bowed  with  great  majesty  and 
some  complacence,  as  if  he  might  have 
added,  "Though  you,  in  your  raw  youthful- 
ness  and  conceit,  may  have  thought  me  too 
old  a  suitor  to  win  a  lovely  bride." 

Gore  responded  by  the  heartiest  felicita- 
tions. "Sir,"  'he  added  after  a  brief  pause, 
"since  it  seems  to  me  that  you  wish  it,  I  will 
explain  my  own  position.  I  can  well  afford 
to  marry.  And  I  would  wish  very  much  to 
marry.  But  there  is  only  one  lady  whom  I 
have  ever  met,  whom  I  have  now,  or  ever, 

148 


MARIQUITA 

felt  that  I  would  greatly  desire  to  win  for 
my  wife." 

So  far  Don  Joaquin  had  listened  with  an 
absolutely  expressionless  countenance  of 
polite  attention,  though  'he  had  never  been 
more  interested. 

"The  lady,"  Gore  continued,  "is  your 
daughter." 

(Here  that  lady's  father  relaxed  the 
aloofness  of  his  manner,  and  permitted  him- 
self a  look  of  benign,  though  not  eager, 
approval.) 

"It  may  be,"  the  young  man  went  on, 
"that  you  have  perceived  my  wishes.  .  .  ." 

(Don  Joaquin  would  express  neither 
negation  nor  assent.) 

"Anyway,  you  know  them  now.  But  your 
daughter  does  not  know  them.  To  thrust 
the  knowledge  of  them  prematurely  upon 
her  would,  I  am  sure,  make  the  chance  of 
her  responding  to  them  very  much  less 
hopeful.  Therefore  I  have  been  slow  and 
cautious  in  endeavoring  to  gain  even  a  spe- 
cial footing  of  friendship  with  her;  I  have, 
lately,  gained  a  little.  I  cannot  flatter  my- 
self that  it  is  more  than  a  little;  between 

149 


MARIQUITA 

us  there  is  on  her  side  only  the  mere  dawn 
of  friendship.  That  being  so,  I  should  have 
been  unwilling  to  speak  to  yourself — lest  it 
should  seem  like  assuming  that  she  had  any 
sort  of  interest  in  me  beyond  what  I  have 
explained.  I  speak  now  because  you  clearly 
expect  that  I  should.  Well,  I  have  spoken. 
But  I  am  so  greatly  in  eager  earnest  about 
this  that  I  ask  you  plainly  to  allow  me  to 
endeavor  to  proceed  with  what,  I  think, 
you  almost  resent  as  a  timidity  of  caution. 
It  is  my  only  chance." 

Don  Joaquin  did  not  see  that  at  all.  If 
he  were  to  inform  Mariquita  that  Mr.  Gore 
wished  to  become  her  husband  and  he,  her 
father,  wished  her  to  become  Mr.  Gore's 
wife,  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  picture 
such  disobedience  as  any  refusal  on  her  part 
would  amount  to. 

"Our  way,"  he  said,  "is  more  direct  than 
your  fanciful  English  way;  it  regards  not  a 
young  girl's  fanciful  delays,  and  timid  un- 
certainty, but  her  solid  welfare,  and  there- 
fore her  solid  happiness.  In  reality  it  gets 
over  her  maiden  modesty  in  the  best  way- 
by  wise  authority.  She  does  not  have  to  tell 


MABIQUITA 

herself  baldly,  'I  have  become  in  love  with 
ithis  young  man,'  but  'My  parents  have 
found  this  young  man  worthy  to  undertake 
the  charge  of  my  life  and  my  happiness,  and 
I  submit  to  their  experience  and  wisdom.' 
Then  duty  will  teach  her  love;  a  safer 
teacher  than  fancy." 

"I  hope,  sir,"  said  Gore,  "that  you  do  not 
yourself  propose  that  method." 

"And  if  I  did?" 

"I  would,  though  more  earnestly  desirous 
to  win  your  daughter  than  I  am  desirous  of 
anything  in  this  life,  tell  you  that  I  refuse 
to  win  her  in  that  way.  It  never  would  win 
her." 

"  Win  her' !    She  is  all  duty—" 

"Excuse  me!  No  duty  would  command 
her  to  become  my  wife  if  she  could  only 
do  so  with  repugnance.  If  you  told  her  it 
was  her  duty  I  should  tell  her  it  was  no 
such  thing." 

Don  Joaquin  was  amazed  at  such  crass 
stupidity.  He  flung  his  open  hands  upwards 
with  angry  protest.  He  was  even  suspicious. 
Did  the  young  man  really  want  to  marry 
his  daughter?  It  was  much  more  evident 


MARIQUITA 

that  he  was  in  earnest  now,  than  it  had 
been  to  Don  Joaquin  that  he  was  in  earnest 
before. 

The  elderly  half-breed  had  not  the  least 
idea  of  blaming  his  own  crude  diplomacy; 
on  the  contrary,  he  had  been  pluming  him- 
self on  its  success.  For  some  time  he  had 
desired  to  obtain  from  Gore  a  definite  ex- 
pression of  his  wish  to  marry  Mariquita, 
and  he  had  obtained  it.  That  it  had  been 
speedily  followed  by  this  further  pro- 
nouncement, incomprehensible  to  the  girl's 
father,  was  not  his  fault,  but  was  due 
entirely  to  the  Englishman's  peculiarities, 
peculiarities  that  to  Don  Joaquin  seemed 
perverse  and  almost  suspicious. 

"If  you  were  a  Spaniard,"  he  said  stiffly, 
"you  would  be  grateful  to  me  for  being 
willing  to  influence  my  daughter  in  your 
favor." 

Gore  knew  that  he  must  be  disturbed,  as 
it  was  his  rule  to  speak  of  'himself  not  as  a 
Spaniard,  but  as  an  American. 

"I  am  grateful  to  you,  sir,  for  being 
willing  to  let  me  hope  to  win  your  daughter 
for  my  wife — most  grateful." 

152 


MARIQUITA 

"You  do  not  appear  grateful  to  me  for  my 
willingness  to  simplify  matters." 

"They  cannot  be  simplified — nor  hurried. 
If  your  daughter  can  be  brought  to  think 
favorably  of  me  as  one  who  earnestly  desires 
to  have  the  great,  great  honor  and  privilege 
of  being  the  guardian  of  her  life  and  its 
happiness,  it  must  be  gradually  and  by  very 
gentle  approaches.  I  hope  that  she  already 
likes  me,  but  I  am  sure  she  does  not  yet  love 


me.' 


"Before  she  has  been  asked  to  be  your 
wife!  Love  you  I  Certainly  not.  She  will 
love  her  husband,  for  that  will  be  her  duty." 

Gore  did  not  feel  at  all  like  laughing;  his 
future  father-in-law's  peculiarities  seemed 
as  perverse  to  him  as  his  own  did  to  Don 
Joaquin.  He  dreaded  their  operation;  it 
seemed  only  too  possible  that  Don  Joaquin 
would  be  led  to  interference  by  them,  and 
such  interference  he  feared  extremely;  nor 
could  he  endure  the  idea  of  Mariquita's 
being  dragooned  by  her  father. 

"If,"  he  declared  stoutly,  "you  thrust 
prematurely  upon  your  daughter  the  idea 
of  me  as  her  husband,  you  will  make  her 

153 


MARIQUITA 

detest  the  thought  of  me,  and  I  never  shall 
be  her  husband." 

Don  Joaquin  was  offended. 

"I  am  not  used  to  do  anything  prema- 
turely," he  said  grimly.  "And  it  may  be 
that  I  understand  my  daughter,  who  is  of 
my  own  race,  better  than  you  who  are  not 
of  her  race." 

"It  may  be.  But  I  am  not  certain  that  it 
is  so.  Sir,  since  you  have  twice  alluded  to 
that  question  of  race,  you  must  not  be  sur- 
prised or  displeased  if  I  remind  you  that 
she  is  as  much  of  my  race  as  of  your  own. 
Half  Spanish  she  is,  but  half  of  English 
blood." 

Don  Joaquin  'was  displeased,  but  all  the 
same,  he  did  feel  that  there  might  be  some- 
thing in  Gore's  argument.  He  had  always 
thought  of  Mariquita  as  Spanish  like  him- 
self ;  but  he  had  never  been  unconscious  that 
she  was  unlike  himself — it  might  possibly 
be  by  reason  of  her  half-English  descent. 

"The  lady,"  Gore  went  on,  "whom  you 
yourself  are  marrying,  would  perhaps  un- 
derstand me  better  than  you  appear  to  do." 

This  reference  to  Sarella  did  not  greatly 

154 


MARIQUITA 

conciliate  her  betrothed.  He  did  not  wish 
her  to  be  occupied  in  understanding  any 
young  man.  All  the  same,  he  was  slightly 
flattered  at  Gore's  having,  apparently,  a 
confidence  in  her  judgment.  Moreover,  he 
knew  that  it  was  so  late  that  this  discussion 
could  not  be  protracted  much  longer,  and 
he  was  not  willing  to  say  anything  like  an 
admission  that  he  had  receded  (which  he 
had  not)  from  his  own  opinion. 

"Her  judgment,"  he  said,  "is  good.  And 
she  has  a  maternal  interest  in  Mariquita.  I 
will  tell  her  what  you  have  said." 

Gore  went  to  bed  smiling  to  himself  at 
the  idea  of  Sarella's  maternal  interest.  She 
did  not  strike  him  as  a  motherly  young  lady. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

SARELLA  found  considerable  enjoy- 
ment in  the  visits  to  Maxwell  necessi- 
tated by  her  period  of  instruction. 
Each  instruction  was  of  reasonable  length 
and  left  plenty  of  time  for  other  affairs,  and 
that  time  landed  Don  Joaquin  in  expenses 
he  had  been  far  from  foreseeing.  Sarella 
had  a  fund  of  mild  obstinacy  which  her 
placidity  of  temper  partly  veiled.  She  in- 
tended that  considerable  additions  to  the 
furniture  of  the  homestead  should  be  made, 
and  she  did  not  intend  to  get  married  with- 
out some  considerable  additions  to  her 
wardrobe  as  well.  Her  dresses,  she  assured 
Don  Joaquin,  were  all  too  youthful.  "Girl's 
clothes"  she  called  them.  She  insisted  on 
the  necessity  of  now  dressing  as  a  matron. 
"Perhaps,"  she  admitted  with  sweet  in- 
genuousness, "I  have  dressed  too  young. 
One  gets  into  a  sort  of  groove.  There  was 

156 


MARIQUITA 

nothing  to  remind  me  that  I  had  passed 
beyond  the  stage  of  school-girl  frocks.  But 
a  married  woman,  unless  she  is  a  silly,  must 
pull  herself  up,  and  adopt  a  matron's  style; 
I  would  rather  now  dress  a  bit  too  old  than 
too  young.  You  don't  want  people  to  be 
saying  you  have  married  a  flapper  1" 

She  got  her  own  way,  and  Don  Joaquin, 
had  he  known  anything  about  it,  might  have 
discovered  that  matronly  garments  were 
more  expensive  than  a  girl's.  "A  girl," 
Sarella  informed  Mariquita,  "need  only  be 
smart.  A  matron's  dress  must  be  hand- 
some." 

To  do  her  justice,  Sarella  tried  to  con- 
vince her  lover  that  Mariquita  also  should 
be  provided  with  new  clothes ;  but  he  would 
agree  only  to  one  new  "suit,"  as  he  called  it, 
for  'his  daughter  to  wear  at  his  wedding.  He 
had  no  idea  of  spending  his  own  money  on 
an  extensive  outfit  "for  another  man's 
wife."  That  expense  would  be  Gore's. 
Even  in  Sarella's  case  he  woulcl  never  have 
agreed  to  buy  all  she  wanted  had  it  been 
announced  at  once,  but  she  was  far  too 
astute  for  any  such  mistake  as  that.  It  ap- 

157 


MARIQUITA 

peared  that  there  must  be  some  delay  before 
their  marriage,  and  she  utilized  it  by 
spreading  her  gradual  demands  over  as  long 
a  time  as  she  could. 

Some  of  the  expense,  too,  Don  Joaquin 
managed  to  reduce  by  discovering  a  market 
he  had  hardly  thought  of  till  now,  for  the 
furs  of  animals  he  had  himself  shot;  some 
of  these  animals  were  rather  uncommon, 
some  even  rare,  and  he  became  aware  of 
their  commercial  value  only  when  bargain- 
ing for  their  making  up  into  coats  or  cloaks 
for  Sarella.  His  subsequent  visits  to  this 
"store"  in  order  to  dispose  of  similar  furs 
against  a  reduction  in  its  charges  for 
Sarella's  clothing,  he  studiously  concealed 
from  her,  but  Sarella  knew  all  about  it. 

"Why,"  she  said  to  herself,  really  admir- 
ing his  sharpness,  "the  old  boy  is  making 
a  profit  on  the  bargain.  He's  getting  more 
for  his  furs  than  he's  spending." 

She  was  careful  not  to  let  him  guess  that 
she  knew  this;  but  she  promised  herself  to 
"take  it  out  in  furniture."  And  she  kept  her 
promise.  It  was  Sarella's  principle  that  a 
person  who  did  not  keep  promises  made  to 

'58 


MARIQUITA 

herself  would  never  keep  those  made  to 
other  people. 

"You  really  must,"  she  told  him,  "have 
some  of  those  furs  made  into  a  handsome 
winter  jacket  for  Mariquita.  They  cost  you 
nothing,  and  she  must  have  a  winter  jacket. 
The  one  she  has  was  got  at  the  Convent — 
and  a  present,  too,  I  believe.  It  was  hand- 
some once — and  that  shows  how  economical 
good  clothes  are;  they  last  so — " 

(Don  Joaquin  thought,  "especially  eco- 
nomical when  they  are  presents.") 

-But  Mariquita  has  grown  out  of  it. 
She  is  so  tall.  A  new  one  made  of  cloth 
from  the  store  would  cost  more  than  one  for 
me,  because  she  is  so  tall.  But  those  furs 
cost  you  nothing." 

She  knew  he  would  not  say,  "No,  but  I 
can  sell  them." 

"Besides,"  she  added,  "if  you  offered 
them  some  more  furs  at  the  store  they  might 
take  something  off  the  charge  of  making  and 
lining.  It  is  often  done.  I'll  ask  them 
about  it  if  you  like." 

Don  Joaquin  did  not  at  all  desire  her  to 
do  that. 


MARIQUITA 

"No  necessity,"  he  said  hastily;  "Mari- 
quita  shall  have  the  jacket.  I  will  take  the 
furs  and  give  the  order  myself." 

"Only  be  sure  to  insist  that  the  lining  is 
silk.  They  have  some  silvery  gray  silk  that 
would  just  go  with  those  furs.  And  Mari- 
quita  would  pay  good  dressing.  Her  style 
wants  it.  She's  solid,  you  know." 

Mariquita  did  get  the  jacket.  But  it  was 
not  of  the  fur  Sarella  had  meant — her 
father  knew  by  that  time  the  value  of  that 
sort  of  fur.  And  Sarella  knew  that  she  had 
made  it  quite  clear  which  sort  she  had 
asked  him  to  supply.  She  was  amused  by 
his  craftiness,  and  though  a  little  ashamed 
of  him,  she  was  readier  to  forgive  his  stingi- 
ness than  if  it  had  been  illustrated  in  a  gar- 
ment for  herself.  After  all,  it  was  perhaps 
as  well  that  Mariquita's  should  not  be  so 
valuable  as  her  own. 

"And  married  women,"  she  reminded 
herself,  "do  have  to  dress  handsomer  than 
girls.  And  Mariquita  will  never  know  the 
difference." 

"I  suggested,"  she  told  her  cousin,  "the 
same  gray  fur  as  mine.  But  I  daresay  a 

160 


MARIQUITA 

brown  fur  will  suit  your  coloring  better, 
and  it's  younger.  Anything  gray  (in  the  fur 
line)  can  be  worn  with  mourning,  and 
nothing's  so  elderly  as  mourning." 

It  was  the  first  present  her  father  had 
ever  given  Mariquita,  and  she  thanked  him 
with  a  warmth  of  gratefulness  that  ought 
to  'have  made  him  ashamed.  But  Don 
Joaquin  was  not  subject  to  the  unpleasant 
consciousness  of  shame.  On  the  contrary, 
he  thought  with  less  complacence  of  Mari- 
quita's  thanks  than  of  the  fact  that  he  had 
given  her  a  necessary  winter  garment  at  a 
profit — for  he  had  taken  the  other  furs  to 
the  store  and  received  for  them  a  substantial 
cash  payment  over  and  above  the  clearing 
of  the  charges  for  making  up  and  lining  the 
commoner  skins  of  which  the  winter  jacket 
was  made. 

"I  wonder,"  thought  Sarella,  "what  that 
lining  is?  It  looks  silky,  but  I'm  sure  it 
isn't  silk.  I  daresay  it's  warmer.  And  after 
all,  Gore  can  get  it  changed  for  silk  when 
it's  worn  out;  the  fur  will  outlast  two  lin- 
ings at  least.  It's  not  so  delicate  as  mine. 
I'm  afraid  mine'll  flatten.  I  must  look  to 
that." 

161 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

MEANWHILE  the  instructions  did 
proceed,  and  Sarella  did  not  mind 
them  much.  Perhaps  she  was  not 
always  attending  very  laboriously — she  had 
a  good  deal  to  think  of;  but  she  listened 
with  all  due  docility,  and  with  quite  reason- 
able, if  not  absorbed,  interest;  and  by  care- 
fully abstaining  from  asking  questions,  did 
not  often  betray  any  misunderstanding  of 
the  nun's  explanations,  for  it  was  by  one 
of  the  nuns  that  all  but  the  preliminary 
instructions  were  given.  Sarella  rather 
liked  her,  deciding  that  she  was  "a  good 
sort,'7  and,  though  neither  young  nor  ex- 
tremely attractive,  she  was  "as  kind  as 
kind,"  and  so  intensely  full  of  her  subject 
that  Sarella  could  not  help  gathering  a 
higher  appreciation  of  its  importance.  In 
Sarella  the  earnest  expounder  of  Catholic 
doctrine  and  practice  had  no  bigotry  and 

162 


MARIQUITA 

not  much  prejudice  to  work  against;  only  a 
thick  crust  of  ignorance,  and  perhaps  a 
thicker  layer  of  natural  indifference.  The 
little  she  had  heard  about  the  Catholic 
Church  was  from  Puritan  neighbors  in  a 
very  small  town  of  a  remote  corner  of  New 
England,  and  if  it  had  made  any  particular 
impression,  must  have  been  found  unfavor- 
able; but  Sarella  had  been  too  little  inter- 
ested in  religion  to  adopt  its  rancors,  her 
whole  disposition,  easy,  self-indulgent  and 
material,  being  opposed  to  rancor  as  to  all 
rough,  sharp,  and  uncomfortable  things. 

Perhaps  the  nun  was  hardly  likely  to 
overcome  the  indifference,  and  perhaps  she 
knew  it.  But  she  prayed  for  Sarella  much 
oftener  than  she  talked  to  her,  and  had  much 
more  confidence  in  what  Our  Lord  Himself 
might  do  for  her  than  in  anything  that  she 
could. 

"After  all,"  she  would  urge,  "it  is  more 
Your  own  business  than  mine.  I  did  not 
make  her,  nor  die  for  her.  Master,  do  Your 
own  work  that  I  cannot." 

Besides,  she,  who  had  no  belief  in  chance, 
would  cheer  herself  by  remembering  that 

163 


MARIQUITA 

He  had  so  ordered  His  patient  providence 
as  to  bring  the  girl  to  the  gate  of  the 
Church,  by  such  ways  as  she  was  so  far 
capable  of.  He  had  begun  the  work;  He 
would  not  half  do  it.  He  would  make  it, 
the  nun  trusted,  a  double  work.  For  in, 
half-obstinately,  insisting  that  Sarella  must 
become  a  Catholic  before  he  married  her, 
the  old  Spaniard,  half-heathen  by  lifelong 
habit,  had  begun  to  awake  to  some  sort  at 
least  of  Catholic  feeling,  some  beginning  of 
Catholic  practice,  for  now  he  was  occasion- 
ally hearing  Mass,  and  that  first  lethargic 
movement  of  a  better  spirit  in  him  might, 
with  God's  blessing,  would,  lead  to  some- 
thing more  genuinely  spiritual. 

The  nun  attributed  those  beginnings  to 
the  prayers  of  the  old  half-breed's  daughter. 
As  yet  she  knew  her  but  little,  but  already, 
by  the  discretlo  spiritum,  which  is,  after 
all,  perhaps  only  another  name  for  the  clear 
instinct  in  things  of  grace  earned  by  those 
who  live  by  grace,  the  elderly  nun,  plain  and 
simple,  recognized  in  Mariquita  one  of  a 
rare,  unfettered  spirituality. 

Sarella  had  not,  at  all  events  consciously, 

164 


MARIQUITA 

to  herself,  told  her  instructress  much  about 
her  young  cousin. 

"Oh,  Mariquita!"  she  had  said,  not  ill- 
naturedly,  "she  lives  up  in  the  moon." 

("Higher  up  than  that,  I  expect," 
thought  Sister  Aquinas,  gathering  the  im- 
pression that  Mariquita  was  not  held  of 
much  account  in  the  family.) 

"But  she  is  not  an  idler?"  said  the  nun. 

"Oh,  not  a  bit,"  Sarella  agreed  with  per- 
fectly ungrudging  honesty.  "An  idler!  No; 
she  works  a  lot  harder  than  she  ought; 
harder  than  she  would  if  I  had  the  arrang- 
ing of  things.  Not  quite  so  hard  as  she 
used,  though,  for  I  have  made  her  father 
get  some  help,  and  he  will  have  to  get  more 
if  Mariquita  leaves  us." 

Perceiving  that  the  nun  did  not  smile, 
but  retreated  into  what  Sarella  called  her 
"inside  expression,"  that  acute  young  woman 
guessed  that  she  might  have  conveyed  the 
idea  that  her  future  stepdaughter  was  to  be 
sent  away  on  her  father's  marriage. 

"There's  always,"  she  explained  care- 
lessly, "the  chance  of  her  marrying.  She  is 
handsome  in  her  own  way,  and  I  don't  think 

165 


MARIQUITA 

she  need  remain  long  unmarried  if  she  chose 
to  marry.  Not  that  she  ever  thinks  of  it." 
("I  expect  not,"  thought  Sister  Aquinas.) 
This  was  about  as  near  to  gossip  as  they 
ever  got.  Sarella,  indeed,  would  have  liked 
the  nun  better  if  she  had  been  "more 
chatty."  I  don't  know  that  Sister  Aquinas 
really  disliked  chat  so  long  as  it  wasn't 
gossip,  but  the  truth  was,  she  did  not  find 
the  time  allowed  for  each  instruction  at  all 
superfluously  long,  and  did  not  wish  to  let 
it  slip  away  in  mere  talk, 


1 66 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

IT  was  only  occasionally  that  Mariquita 
accompanied  Sarella  when  the  latter 
went  to  the  convent  for  instruction.  On 
one  of  those  occasions  the  Loretto  Convent 
near  Denver  was  mentioned,  and  Sister 
Aquinas  said : 

"I  had  a  niece  there  a  few  years  ago — 
Eleanor  Hurst.  I  wonder  if  you  know 
her?" 

"Oh,  yes!  Quite  well."  Mariquita 
answered,  with  the  sort  of  shining  interest 
that  always  made  her  look  suddenly 
younger.  "A  friend  of  ours  brought  me 
news,  lately,  that  she  has  become  a  Car- 
melite." 

"What  is  a  Carmelite?"  Sarella  asked. 

"A  nun  of  one  of  the  great  Contemplative 
Orders,"  Sister  Aquinas  explained,  turning 
politely  to  Sarella.  "It  is  a  much  rarer 
vocation  than  that  of  active  nuns,  like  our- 

167 


MARIQUITA 

selves.  Carmelites  do  not  teach  school,  or 
have  orphanages,  or  homes  for  broken  old 
men  or  women,  nor  nurse  the  sick,  either  in 
their  homes  or  in  hospital." 

"Sounds  pretty  useless,"  Sarella  remarked 
carelessly;  "what  do  they  do  anyway?" 

"They  are  not  at  all  useless,"  the  nun 
answered,  smiling  good-humoredly.  "Mar- 
ried women  are  not  useless,  though  they  do 
not  do  any  of  those  things  either." 

"Of  course  not.  But  they  are  married. 
They  make  their  husbands  comfortable — " 

The  nun  could  not  help  taking  her  own 
turn  of  interrupting,  and  said  with  a  little 
laugh : 

"Not  quite  always,  perhaps." 

"The  good  ones  do." 

"Perhaps  not  invariably.  Some  even 
pious  women  are  not  remarkable  for  making 
their  husbands  comfortable." 

Sarella  laughed,  and  the  elderly  nun  went 
on. 

"Of  course,  it  is  the  vocation  of  married 
women  to  do  as  you  say.  And  I  hope  most 
do  it,  that  and  setting  the  example  of  happy 
Christian  homes.  I  do  not  really  mean  to 

1 68 


MARIQUITA 

judge  of  the  vocation  by  those  who  fail  to 
fulfill  it.  It  is  God's  vocation  for  the  vast 
majority  of  His  daughters.  But  not  for  all." 

"There  aren't  husbands  enough  for  all  of 
us,"  Sarella,  who  was  "practical"  and 
slightly  statistical,  remarked,  with  the  com- 
placence of  one  for  whom  a  husband  had 
been  forthcoming. 

"Exactly,"  agreed  the  elderly  nun, 
laughing  cheerfully,  "so  it's  a  good  thing, 
you  see,  that  there  are  other  vocations;  ours, 
for  instance." 

"Oh,"  Sarella  protested  with  hasty  polite- 
ness, "no  one  could  think  people  like  you 
useless.  You  do  so  much  good." 

"So  do  the  Carmelites.  Only  their  way 
of  it  is  not  quite  the  same.  Would  you  say 
that  Shakespeare  was  useless,  or  Dante?" 

To  tell  truth,  Sarella  had  never  in  her  life 
said  anything  about  either,  or  thought  any- 
thing. Nevertheless,  she  was  aware  that 
they  were  considered  important. 

"They  did  not,"  the  nun  said  eagerly, 
"teach  schools,  or  nurse  the  sick,  or  do  any 
of  those  things  for  the  sake  of  which  some 
people  kindly  forgive  us  for  being  nuns — 

169 


MARIQUITA 

not  all  people,  unfortunately.  Yet  they  are 
recognized  as  not  having  been  useless.  They 
are  not  useless  now,  long  after  they  are 
dead.  Mankind  admits  its  debt  to  them. 
They  served,  and  they  serve  still.  Not  with 
physical  service,  like  nurses,  or  doctors,  or 
cooks,  or  house-servants.  But  they  contrib- 
uted to  the  quality  of  the  human  race.  So 
have  many  great  men  and  women  who 
never  wrote  a  line — Joan  of  Arc,  for  in- 
stance. The  contribution  of  those  illustrious 
servants  was  eminent  and  famous,  but  many 
who  have  never  been  famous,  who  never 
have  been  known,  have  contributed  in  a 
different  degree  or  fashion  to  the  quality  of 
mankind:  innumerable  priests,  unknown 
perhaps  outside  their  parishes;  innumerable 
nuns,  innumerable  wives  and  mothers ;  and 
a  Carmelite  nun  so  contributes,  eminently, 
immeasurably  except  by  God,  though  invis- 
ibly, and  inaudibly.  Not  only  by  her  pray- 
ers, I  mean  her  prayers  of  intercession, 
though  again  it  is  only  God  who  can 
measure  what  she  does  by  them.  But  just 
by  being  what  she  is,  vast,  unknown  num- 
bers of  people  are  brought  into  the  Catholic 

170 


MARIQUITA 

Church  not  only  by  her  prayers  but  by  her 
life.  Some  read  themselves  into  the  true 
faith,  into  any  faith ;  they  are  very  few  in 
comparison  of  those  who  come  to  believe. 
Some  are  preached  into  the  Church — a  few 
only,  again,  compared  with  the  number  of 
those  who  do  come  to  her.  What  brings 
most  of  those  who  are  brought?  I  believe 
it  is  a  certain  quality  that  they  have  become 
aware  of  in  the  Catholic  Church,  that 
brings  the  immense  majority.  The  young 
man  in  the  factory,  or  in  the  army,  in  a  ship, 
or  on  a  ranch — anywhere — falls  into  com- 
panionship with  a  Catholic,  or  with  a  group 
of  Catholics;  and  in  him,  or  them,  he 
gradually  perceives  this  quality  which  he 
has  never  perceived  elsewhere.  It  may  be 
that  the  Catholics  he  has  come  to  know  are 
not  perfect  at  all.  The  quality  is  not  all  of 
their  own  earning;  it  is  partly  an  inherit- 
ance: some  of  it  from  their  mothers,  some 
from  their  sisters,  some  from  their  friends; 
ever  so  much  of  it  from  the  saints,  who  con- 
tributed it  to  the  air  of  the  Church  that 
Catholics  breathe.  The  Contemplatives  are 
contributing  it  every  day,  and  all  day  long. 

171 


MARIQUITA 

Each,  in  her  case,  behind  her  grille,  is  for- 
ever giving  something  immeasurable,  except 
by  God,  to  the  transcendent  quality  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  This  may  be,  and  mostly 
is,  unsuspected  by  almost  all  her  fellow- 
creatures;  but  not  unfelt  by  quite  all.  A 
Carmelite's  convent  is  mostly  in  a  great 
city;  countless  human  beings  pass  its  walls. 
They  cannot  help,  seeing  them,  saying  to 
their  own  hearts,  'In  there,  human  crea- 
tures, like  me,  are  living  unlike  me.  They 
have  given  up  everything — and  for  no  pos- 
sible reward  here.  Ambition  cannot  account 
for  any  part  of  it  even.  They  cannot  become 
anything  great  even  in  their  Church,  nor 
famous;  they  will  die  as  little  known  or 
regarded  as  they  live.  They  can  win  no 
popularity.  They  obtain  no  applause.  They 
are  called  useless  for  their  pains.  They  are 
scolded  for  doing  what  they  do,  though 
they  would  not  be  scolded  if  they  were  mere 
old-maids  who  pampered  and  indulged  only 
themselves.  The  wicked  women  of  this  city 
are  less  decried  than  they.  They  are 
abused,  and  they  have  to  be  content  to  be 
abused,  remembering  that  their  Master  said 

172 


MARIQUITA 

they  must  be  content  to  fare  no  better  than 
Himself.  It  is  something  above  this  world, 
that  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  another 
world,  and  such  a  belief  in  it  as  is  not 
proved  by  those  who  may  try  to  grab  two 
worlds,  this  one  with  their  right  hands,  the 
next  with  their  left.  The  life  almost  all  of 
us  declare  impossible  here  on  earth,  they 
are  living.'  Such  thoughts  as  these,  broken 
thoughts,  hit  full  in  the  face  numbers  of 
passers-by  every  day,  and  how  many  days 
are  there  not  in  a  year — in  a  Carmelite's 
own  lifetime.  They  are  witnesses  to  Jesus 
Christ,  who  cannot  be  explained  away.  A 
chaplain  told  me  that  nothing  pleased  his 
soldiers  so  much  as  to  get  him  in  the  midst 
of  a  group  of  them  and  say,  'Tell  us  about 
the  nuns,  Father.  Tell  us  about  the  Car- 
melites and  the  Poor  Clares — ' 

"I  knew  a  girl  called  Clare,"  Sarella 
commented  brightly;  "she  was  as  poor  as  a 
church  mouse,  but  she  married  a  widower 
with  no  children  and  a  huge  fortune.  I  beg 
your  pardon — but  the  name  reminded  me 
of  her." 

Sister  Aquinas  laughed  gently. 

17? 


"Well,  she  was  a  useful  friend  to  you!" 

"Not  at  all.  She  never  did  a  hand's  turn 
for  anyone.  I  don't  know  what  she  would 
have  done  if  she  hadn't  married  a  rich  man, 
she  was  so  helpless.  But  you  were  saying?'1 

"Only,  that  his  soldiers  loved  to  hear  the 
chaplain  tell  them  about  the  Contemplative 
nuns.  Nothing  interested  them  more.  I  am 
sure  it  was  not  thrown  away  on  them.  It 
was  like  showing  them  a  high  and  lovely 
place.  I  should  think  no  one  can  look  at  a 
splendid  white  mountain  and  not  want  to  be 
climbing.  That  was  all." 

Would  Sarella  ever  want  to  climb? 
Sister  Aquinas  did  not  know,  nor  do  I 
know. 

Her  eagerness  had  been,  perhaps,  partly 
spurred  by  other  criticism  than  Sarella's; 
Sarella  was  not  the  only  one  who  had  told 
Nelly  Hurst's  aunt  that  it  was  a  pity  the  girl 
had  "decided  on  one  of  the  useless  Orders." 

That  every  phase  of  life  approved  by  the 
Catholic  Church,  as  the  Contemplative 
Orders  are,  must  be  useful,  Sister  Aquinas 
knew  well.  And  it  wounded  her  to  hear  her 
niece's  high  choice  belittled.  She  could  not 

174 


MARIQUITA 

help  knowing  that  this  belittling  was  simply 
a  naive  confession  of  materialism,  and  an 
equally  naive  expression  of  human  selfish- 
ness. We  approve  the  vocation  of  nuns 
>vhose  work  is  for  our  own  bodies;  we 
cannot  easily  see  the  splendor  of  direct 
service  of  God  Himself  who  has  no  material 
needs  of  His  own.  That  God's  most  usual 
course  of  Providence  calls  us  to  serve  Him 
by  serving  our  fellows,  we  see  clearly 
ienough,  because  it  suits  us  to  see  it;  but  we 
are  too  purblind  to  perceive  that  even  that 
service  need  not  in  every  case  be  material 
service,  and  it  scandalizes  us  to  remember 
that  God  chooses  in  some  instance  to  be 
served  directly,  not  by  the  service  of  any 
creature ;  because  the  instances  are  less  com- 
mon, we  are  shocked  when  asked  to  admit 
that  they  exist.  If  Christ  were  still  visibly 
on  earth,  millions  would  be  delighted  to 
feed  Him,  but  it  would  annoy  almost  all  of 
us  to  see  even  a  few  serving  Him  by  sitting 
idle  at  His  feet  listening.  Hardly  any  of  us 
but  think  Martha  was  doing  more  that 
afternoon  at  Bethany  than  her  sister,  and  it 
troubles  us  that  Jesus  Christ  thought  differ- 

'75 


MARIQUITA 

ently.  It  was  so  easy  to  sit  still  and  listen — 
that  is  why  the  huge  majority  of  us  find  it 
impossible,  and  are  angry  that  here  and 
there  a  Contemplative  nun  wants  to  do  it. 

Of  liberty  we  prattle  in  every  language; 
and  most  loudly  do  they  scream  of  it  who 
are  most  angry  that  God  takes  leave  to  exist, 
and  that  many  of  His  creatures  still  refuse 
to  deny  His  existence;  that  many  admit  His 
right  to  command,  and  their  own  obligation 
to  obey.  These  liberty-brawlers  would  be  the 
first  to  concede  to  every  woman  the  "inalien- 
able right"  to  lead  a  corrupt  life,  destructive 
of  society,  and  the  last  to  allow  to  a  handful 
of  women  out  of  the  world's  population  the 
right  to  live  a  life  of  spotless  whiteness  at 
the  immediate  feet  of  the  Master  they  love. 

Was  Sister  Aquinas  so  carried  away  as  to 
be  forgetful  that  Sarella  was  not  the  only 
auditor?  Mariquita  had  listened  too. 


176 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

DURING  these  weeks  of  Sarella's  in- 
struction   she   achieved   something 
which  to  her  seemed  a  greater  tri- 
umph  than  her  -succession   of   cumulative 
triumphs  in  the  matters  of  trousseau  and  of 
furniture.     She  persuaded  Don  Joaquin  to 
buy  a  motor-car! 

She  would  not  have  succeeded  in  this 
attempt  but  for  certain  circumstances  which 
in  reality  robbed  her  success  of  some  of  its 
triumph.  In  the  first  place,  the  machine 
was  not  a  new  one;  in  the  second,  Don 
Joaquin  took  it  instead  of  a  debt  which  he 
did  not  think  likely  to  be  paid.  Then  also 
he  had  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  so 
many  long  rides  as  Sarella's  frequent  jour- 
neys to  Maxwell  involved,  were  likely  to 
prove  costly.  They  took  a  good  deal  out  of 
the  horses,  even  without  accidents  occurring, 
and  an  accident  had  nearly  occurred  which 

177 


MARIQUITA 

would  have  very  largely  reduced  the  value 
of  one  of  the  best  of  his  horses — the  one,  as 
it  happened,  best  fitted  for  carrying  a  lady. 
Sarella  all  but  let  the  horse  down  on  a  piece 
of  ragged,  stony  road:  Don  Joaquin  being 
himself  at  her  elbow  and  watchful,  had  just 
succeeded  in  averting  the  accident;  but  lover 
as  he  was,  he  was  able  to  see  that  Sarella 
would  never  be  a  horse-woman.  She  dis- 
liked riding,  and  he  was  not  such  a  tyrant 
as  to  insist  on  her  doing  a  thing  she  never 
would  do  well,  and  had  no  pleasure  in 
doing.  On  the  whole,  he  made  up  his  mind 
that  it  would  be  more  economical  to  take 
this  second-hand  car  in  settlement  of  a  bad 
debt  than  continue  running  frequent  risks 
of  injury  to  his  horses. 

The  acquisition  of  the  car  made  it  pos- 
sible to  shorten  the  period  of  these  journeys 
to  Maxwell;  it  did  not  require  a  night's  rest, 
and  the  trip  itself  was  much  more  rapidly 
accomplished. 

The  period  of  Sarella's  instruction  was 
not  one  of  idleness  on  Gore's  part,  in  refer- 
ence to  Mariquita.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
he  really  was  making  some  advance.  He 


MARIQUITA 

saw  much  more  of  her  than  used  to  be  the 
case.  She  was  now  accustomed  to  chance 
meetings  with  him,  or  what  she  took  for 
chance  meetings,  and  did  not  make  hasty 
escape  from  them,  or  treat  him  during  them 
with  reserve.  They  were,  in  fact,  friends 
and  almost  confidential  friends;  but  if  Gore 
had  continued  as  wise  as  he  had  been  when 
discussing  the  situation  with  her  father,  he 
would  have  been  able  to  see  that  it  did  not 
amount  to  more  than  that;  that  they  were 
friends  indeed  because  Mariquita  was 
wholly  free  from  any  suspicion  that  more 
than  that  could  come  of  it.  She  had  simply 
come  to  a  settled  opinion  that  he  was  nice, 
a  kind  man,  immensely  pleasanter  as  a  com- 
panion than  any  man  she  had  known  before, 
a  trustworthy  friend  who  could  tell  her  of 
much  whereof  she  had  been  ignorant.  She 
began  in  a  fashion  to  know  "his  people," 
too ;  and  he  saw  with  extreme  pleasure  that 
she  was  interested  in  them.  That  was 
natural  enough.  She  knew  almost  nobody; 
as  a  grown-up  woman,  had  really  known 
none  of  her  own  sex  till  Sarella  came;  it 
would  have  been  strange  if  she  had  not 

179 


MARIQUITA 

heard  with  interest  about  women  whose 
portraits  were  so  affectionately  drawn  for 
her,  who,  she  could  easily  discern,  were 
pleasant  and  refined,  cheerful,  bright,  amus- 
ing, and  kind,  too ;  cordial,  friendly  people. 
All  the  same,  Gore's  talk  of  his  family 
did  connote  a  great  advance  in  intimacy 
with  Mariquita.  He  seemed  to  assume  that 
she  might  know  them  herself,  and  she  gath- 
ered the  notion  that  when  he  had  bought  a 
range,  some  of  them  would  come  out 
and  live  with  him,  so  that  she  said  noth- 
ing to  contradict  a  possibility  that  he  had 
after  all  only  implied.  Gore,  meanwhile, 
with  no  suspicion  of  her  idea  that  his  sisters 
might  come  out  to  visit  him,  and  noting 
with  great  satisfaction  that  she  never  con- 
tradicted his  hints  and  hopes  that  they  might 
all  meet,  attached  more  importance  to  it 
than  he  ought.  Perhaps  he  built  more  hope 
on  this  than  on  any  one  thing  besides.  He 
was  fully  aware  that  in  all  their  intercourse 
there  was  no  breath  of  flirtation.  But  he 
could  not  picture  Mariquita  flirting,  and 
did  not  want  to  picture  it.  Meanwhile  their 
intercourse  was  daily  growing  to  an  inti- 

180 


MARIQUITA 

macy,  or  he  took  it  for  such.  He  did  not 
sufficiently  weigh  the  fact  that  of  herself 
she  said  little.  She  was  most  ready  to  be 
interested  in  all  he  told  her  of  himself,  his 
previous  life,  his  friends;  but  of  her  own 
real  life,  which  was  inward  and  apart  from 
the  few  events  of  her  experience,  she  did 
not  speak.  This  did  not  strike  him  as 
reserve,  for  those  who  show  a  warm, 
friendly  interest  in  others  do  not  seem 
reserved. 

Gore  never  startled  her  by  gallantry  or 
compliments;  his  sympathy  and  admiration 
were  too  respectful  for  compliment,  and  a 
certain  instinct  warned  him  that  gallantry 
would  have  perplexed  and  disconcerted  her. 

None  the  less,  he  believed  that  he  was 
making  progress,  and  the  course  of  it  was 
full  of  beautiful  and  happy  moments.  So 
things  went  on,  with,  as  Gore  thought,  sure 
though  not  rapid  pace.  He  was  too  much 
in  earnest  to  risk  haste,  and  also  too  happy 
in  the  present  to  make  blundering  clutches 
at  the  future.  Then  with  brutal  suddenness 
Don  Joaquin  intervened. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

HE  met  his  daughter  and  Gore  return- 
ing to  the  homestead,  Mariquita's 
face  bright  with  friendly  interest  in 
all  that  Gore  had  been  telling  her,  and  the 
young  man's  certainly  not  less  happy.  Don 
Joaquin  was  out  of  temper;  Sarella  and  he 
had  had  an  economic  difference  and  he  had 
been  aware  that  she  had  deceived  him. 

He  barely  returned  Gore's  and  Mari- 
quita's greeting,  and  his  brow  was  black.  It 
was  not  till  some  time  later  that  he  and 
Gore  found  themselves  alone  together. 
Then  he  said  ill-humoredly: 

"You  and  Mariquita  were  riding  this 
afternoon — a  good  while,  I  think." 

"It  did  not  seem  long  to  me,  as  you  can 
understand,"  Gore  replied  smiling,  andi 
anxious  to  ignore  the  old  fellow's  bad 
temper. 

"Perhaps  it  does  not  seem  long  to  you 

182 


MARIQUITA 

since  you  began  to  speak  of  marrying  my 
daughter." 

"I  did  not  begin  to  speak  of  it.  I  should 
have  preferred  to  hold  my  tongue  till  I 
could  feel  I  had  some  right  to  speak  of  it.  It 
was  you,  sir,  who  began." 

"And  that  was  a  long  time  ago.  Have  you 
yet  made  my  daughter  understand  you?" 

"I  cannot  be  sure  yet." 

"But  I  must  be  sure.  To-morrow  I  shall 
see  that  she  understands." 

Gore  was  aghast. 

"I  earnestly  beg  you  to  abstain  from  doing 
that,"  he  begged,  too  anxious  to  prevent  Don 
Joaquin's  interference  to  risk  precipitating  it 
by  showing  the  anger  he  felt. 

"Perhaps  you  no  longer  wish  to  marry 
her.  If  so,  it  would  be  advisable  to  reduce 
your  intercourse  to  common  civilities — " 

"Sir,"  Gore  interrupted,  "I  cannot  allow 
you  to  go  on  putting  any  case  founded  on 
such  an  assumption  as  that  of  my  no  longer 
wishing  to  marry  your  daughter.  I  wish  it 
more  every  day  .  .  ." 

The  young  man  had  a  right  to  be  angry, 
and  he  was  angry,  and  perhaps  was  not  un- 

183 


MARIQUITA 

willing  to  show  it.  But  it  was  necessary 
that  he  should  for  every  reason  be  moderate 
in  letting  his  resentment  appear.  To  have 
a  loud  quarrel  with  a  prospective  father- 
in-law  is  seldom  a  measure  likely  to  help 
the  suitor's  wishes. 

He  in  his  turn  was  interrupted. 

"Then,"  said  Don  Joaquin,  "it  is  time 
you  told  her  so." 

"I  do  not  think  so.  I  think  it's  not  time, 
and  that  to  tell  her  so  now  would  greatly 
injure  my  chance  of  success." 

"I  will  answer  for  your  success.  I  shall 
myself  speak  to  her.  I  shall  tell  her  that 
you  wish  to  marry  her,  and  that  I  have, 
some  time  ago,  given  my  full  consent." 

Gore  was  well  aware  that  Don  Joaquin 
could  not  "answer  for  his  success."  It  was 
horrible  to  him  to  think  of  Mariquita  being 
bullied,  and  he  was  sure  that  her  father 
intended  to  bully  her.  Anything  would  be 
better  than  that.  He  was  intensely  earnest 
in  his  wish  to  succeed;  it  was  that  earnest- 
ness that  made  him  willing  to  be  patient; 
but  he  was,  if  possible,  even  more  intensely 
determined  that  the  poor  girl  should  not  be 


MARIQUITA 

tormented  and  dragooned  by  her  tyrannical 
father.  That,  he  would  risk  a  great  deal  to 
prevent,  as  far  as  his  own  power  went. 

"I  most  earnestly  beg  you  not  to  do  that," 
he  said  in  a  very  low  voice. 

"But  I  intend  to  do  it.  If  you  choose  to 
say  that  you  do  not,  after  all,  wish  to  marry 
her,  then  I  will  merely  suggest  that  you 
should  leave  us." 

"I  have  just  told  you  the  exact 
contrary — " 

"Then,  I  shall  tell  Mariquita  so  to-mor- 
row, stating  that  your  proposal  meets  with 
my  full  consent,  and  that  in  view  of  her 
prolonged  intimacy  with  you,  her  consent  is 
taken  by  me  for  granted.  I  do  take  it  for 
granted." 

"I  wish  I  could.  But  I  cannot.  Sir,  I 
still  entreat  you  to  abandon  this  intention  of 
yours." 

"Only  on  condition  that  you  make  the 
proposal  yourself  without  any  further 
delay." 

From  this  decision  the  obstinate  old 
father  would  not  recede.  The  discussion 
continued  for  some  time,  but  he  seemed  to 

185 


MARIQUITA 

grow  only  more  fixed  in  his  intention,  and 
certainly  he  became  more  acerbated  in 
temper.  Gore  was  sure  that  if  he  were 
allowed  to  take  up  the  matter  with  his 
daughter,  it  would  be  with  even  more 
harshly  dictatorial  tyranny  than  had  seemed 
probable  at  first. 

Finally  Gore  promised  that  he  would 
himself  propose  to  Mariquita  in  form  on 
the  morrow,  Don  Joaquin  being  with  diffi- 
culty induced  to  undertake  on  his  side  that 
he  would  not  "prepare"  her  for  what  was 
coming.  He  gave  this  promise  quite  as  re- 
luctantly as  Gore  gave  his.  The  younger 
man  dreaded  the  bad  effects  of  precipitancy; 
the  elder,  who  had  plenty  of  self-conceit 
behind  his  dry  dignity,  relinquished  very 
unwillingly  the  advantages  he  counted  upon 
from  his  diplomacy,  and  the  weight  of  his 
authority  being  known  beforehand  to  be  on 
the  suitor's  side.  If  Gore  were  really  so 
uncertain  of  success,  it  would  be  a  feather 
in  the  paternal  cap  to  have  insured  that  suc- 
cess by  his  solemn  indications  of  approval. 
But  he  saw  that  without  his  promise  of 
absolute  abstention  from  interference,  Gore 

1 86 


MARIQUITA 

would  not  agree  to  make  his  proposal,  so 
Don  Joaquin  ungraciously  yielded  the  point 
perhaps  chiefly  because  important  business 
called  him  away  from  the  morrow's  dawn 
till  late  at  night 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

AFTER  breakfast  next  morning  Sa- 
rella,  not  quite  accidentally,  found 
herself  alone  with  Gore. 

"You  gentlemen,'7  she  said,  "did  go  to 
bed  sometime,  I  suppose.  But  I  thought 
you  never  were  going  to  stop  your  talk — 
and  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I  wished  my  bed- 
room was  farther  away,  or  had  a  thicker 
wall.  /  go  to  bed  to  sleep.  You  were  at  it 
two  hours  and  twenty  minutes." 

Gore  duly  apologized  for  the  postpone- 
ment of  her  sleep,  and  wondered  how  thin 
the  wooden  partition  might  be  between  her 
room  and  that  in  which  the  long  discussion 
had  taken  place. 

"These  partitions  of  thin  boarding  are 
wretched,"  she  informed  him,  "especially 
as  they  are  only  stained.  If  they  were  even 
papered  it  would  prevent  the  tobacco-smoke 
coming  through  the  cracks  where  the  boards 


MARIQUITA 

have  shrunk."  Gore  could  not  help  smiling. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "you  want  to  let  me 
know  that  our  talk  was  not  quite  inaudible." 

"No,  it  wasn't.  Not  quite.  I'll  tell  you 
how  much  was  audible.  That  you  were 
talking  about  Mariquita,  and  that  you  were 
arguing,  and  I  think  you  were  both  angry. 
I  am  sure  he  was." 

"So  was  I ;  though  not  so  loud,  I  hope." 

"Look  here,  Mr.  Gore.  You  weren't 
loud  at  all.  But  I  knew  you  were  angry. 
And  so  you  ought  to  have  been.  Why  on 
earth  can't  he  keep  his  fingers  out  of  the 
pot?  You  and  Mariquita  didn't  interfere  in 
his  love  affair,  and  he'll  do  no  good  inter- 
fering in  yours." 

Gore  laughed. 

"So  you  heard  it  all!"  he  said. 

"No.  If  you  had  talked  as  loud  as  he  did 
I  should.  But  you  didn't.  It  was  easy  to 
hear  him  say  that  to-morrow  he  would  go 
and  order  Mariquita  to  marry  you.  If  that 
had  been  the  end  of  it,  I  just  believe  I 
should  have  dressed  myself  and  come  in  to 
tell  him  not  to  be  silly.  But  it  wasn't  the 
end.  Was  it?" 


MARIQUITA 

"No.  To  stop  that  plan  I  promised  I 
would  propose  to  Mariquita  to-day — only 
he  was  to  say  nothing  about  it  to  her  first." 

"Well,  then,  I  don't  know  as  he  has  done 
any  harm.    You  might  do  worse." 
"I  might  do  better." 
"What  better?" 
"Wait  a  bit." 

"I'm  not  so  sure.  I  don't  know  that  any 
harm  would  come  of  waiting  a  bit,  and  I 
daresay  it's  all  very  pleasant  meanwhile. 
But  you  can  go  on  with  your  love-making 
after  you're  engaged  just  as  well  as  before." 

"Ah!    If  we  were  engaged!" 

"Pfush!"  quoth  Sarella,  inventing  a  word 
which  stood  her  in  stead  of  "Pshaw." 

Gore  had  to  laugh  again,  and  no  doubt 
her  good-natured  certainty  encouraged  him 
— albeit  he  did  not  believe  she  knew  Mari- 
quita. 

"What  o'clock  shall  you  propose?"  she 
inquired  coolly. 

Of  course  he  could  not  tell  her. 

"I  guess,"  she  said,  "it  will  be  between 
two  and  three.  Dinner  at  twelve.  Digestion 

190 


MARIQUITA 

and  preliminaries,  12:45  to  1 :45-  Proposal 
2:45  say.  You  will  be  engaged  by  2:50." 

As  before,  Gore  liked  the  encouragement 
though  very  largely  discounting  its  worth. 

"On  the  whole,"  Sarella  observed,  "I 
daresay  my  old  man  has  done  good — as  he 
has  made  himself  scarce.  If  he  hadn't 
threatened  to  put  his  own  foot  in  it,  you 
might  have  gone  on  staring  up  at  Mariquita 
in  the  stars  till  she  was  forty,  and  then  it 
might  have  struck  you  that  you  could  get 
on  fine  without  her." 

Sarella  evidently  thought  that  nothing 
was  to  be  done  before  the  time  she  had  indi- 
cated; during  the  morning  she  was  in  evi- 
dence4 as  usual,  but  immediately  after  dinner 
she  retreated  to  her  studies,  and  was  seen  no 
more  for  a  long  time. 

Gore  boldly  announced  his  intention  to 
be  idle  and  told  Mariquita  she  must  be  idle 
too,  begging  her  to  ride  with  him.  To  him- 
self it  seemed  as  if  everyone  about  the  place 
must  see  that  something  was  in  the  wind; 
but  the  truth  was  that  everyone  had  been  so 
long  expecting  something  definite  to  happen 
without  hearing  of  it,  that  some  of  them  had 

191 


MARIQUITA 

decided  that  Gore  and  Mariquita  had  fixed 
up  their  engagement  already  at  some  unsus- 
pected moment,  and  the  rest  had  almost 
ceased  to  expect  to  hear  anything. 

As  to  Mariquita,  she  was  clearly  unsus- 
picious that  this  afternoon  was  to  have  any 
special  significance  for  her.  Always  cheer- 
ful and  unembarrassed,  she  was  exactly  her 
usual  self,  untroubled  by  the  faintest  pre- 
sentiment of  fateful  events.  Her  ready 
agreement  to  Gore's  proposal  that  they 
should  ride  together  was,  he  knew  well,  of 
no  real  good  omen.  It  made  him  have  a 
guilty  feeling,  as  if  he  were  getting  her  out 
under  false  pretences. 

There  was  so  happy  a  light  of  perfect, 
confiding  friendliness  upon  her  face  that  it 
seemed  almost  impossible  to  cloud  it  by  the 
suggestion  of  anything  that  would  be  dif- 
ferent from  simple  friendship.  But  must  it 
be  clouded  by  such  a  suggestion?  "Cloud- 
ing" means  darkening;  was  it  really  impos- 
sible for  that  light,  so  trusting  and  so  con- 
tented, of  unquestioning  friendship,  to  be 
changed  without  being  rendered  less 
bright?  Must  Gore  assume  her  to  be  special- 

192 


MARIQUITA 

ly  incapable  of  an  affection  deeper  than  even 
friendship?  No;  of  anything  good  she  was 
capable;  no  depths  of  love  could  be  beyond 
her,  and  he  was  sure  that  her  nature  was 
one  of  deep  affectionateness,  left  unclaimed 
till  now.  The  real  loneliness  of  her  life,  he 
told  himself,  had  lain  in  this  very  depth  of 
unclaimed  lovingness.  And  he  told  himself, 
too,  not  untruly,  that  she  had  been  less 
lonely  of  late. 

Gore  might,  he  felt,  hope  to  awake  all 
that  dormant  treasure  of  affection — if  he 
had  time!  But  he  had  no  longer  time.  He 
did  truly,  though  not  altogether,  shrink 
from  the  task  he  had  set  himself  to-day. 
He  had  a  genuine  reluctance  to  risk  spoil- 
ing that  happy  content  of  hers;  yet  he  could 
not  say  it  was  worse  than  a  risk.  There  was 
the  counter  possibility  of  that  happy  content 
changing  into  something  lovelier. 

That  she  was  not  incapable  of  love  he 
told  himself  with  full  assurance,  and  he  was 
half-disposed  to  believe  that  she  was  one 
who  would  never  love  till  asked  for  her 
love. 

Sarella  might  be  nearer  right  than  he  had 

193 


MARIQUITA 

been.  She  was  of  much  coarser  fibre  than 
Mariquita,  and  perhaps  he  had  made  too 
much  of  that,  for  she  was  a  woman  at  all 
events,  and  shrewd,  watchful  and  a  looker- 
on  with  the  proverbial  advantages  (maybe) 
over  the  actors  themselves.  Sarella  knew 
how  Mariquita  spoke  of  him,  though  he  did 
not  believe  that  between  the  two  cousins 
there  had  been  confidences  about  himself; 
not  real  confidences,  though  Sarella  was  just 
the  girl  to  "chaff"  Mariquita  about  himself, 
and  would  know  how  her  chaff  had  been 
taken.  At  all  events,  Don  Joaquin  must  be 
forestalled ;  his  blundering  interference 
must  be  prevented,  and  it  could  only  be 
prevented  by  Gore  keeping  his  word  and 
speaking  himself, 


194 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

HE  had  kept  his  word,  and  had  spoken. 
They  had  been  out  together  a  long 
time  when  the  opportunity  came; 
they  had  dismounted,  and  the  horses  were 
resting.  He  and  she  were  sitting  in  the 
shade  of  a  small  group  of  trees,  to  two  of 
which  the  horses  were  tied.  Their  talk  had 
turned  naturally,  and  with  scarcely  any  pur- 
poseful guidance  of  his,  in  a  direction  that 
helped  him.  And  Mariquita  talked  with 
frank  unreserve;  she  felt  at  home  with  him 
now,  and  her  natural  silence  had  long  be- 
fore now  been  melted  by  his  sincerity;  her 
silence  of  habit  was  chiefly  habit,  due  not 
to  distrust  nor  a  guarded  prudence,  but  to 
the  much  simpler  fact  that  till  his  arrival, 
she  had  never  since  her  home-coming  been 
called  upon  to  speak  in  any  real  sense  by 
anyone  who  cared  to  hear  her,  or  who  had 
an  interest  in  what  she  might  have  to  say. 


MARIQUITA 

His  proposal  did  not  come  with  the  least 
abruptness,  but  it  was  clear  and  unmistake- 
able  when  it  came,  and  she  understood— 
Mariquita  could  understand  a  plain  mean- 
ing as  well  as  anyone.  She  did  not  interrupt, 
nor  avert  her  gaze.  Indeed,  she  turned  her 
eyes,  which  had  been  looking  far  away 
across  the  lovely,  empty  prairie  to  the 
horizon,  to  him  as  he  spoke,  and  her  hands 
ceased  their  idle  pulling  at  the  grass  beside 
her.  In  her  eyes,  as  she  listened,  there  was 
a  singular  shining,  and  presently  they  held 
a  glistening  like  the  dew  in  early  morning 
flowers. 

Gore  had  not  moved  any  nearer  to  her, 
nor  did  he  as  he  ceased.  One  hand  of  hers 
she  moved  nearer  to  him,  now,  though  not 
so  as  to  touch  him. 

"That  is  what  you  want?"  she  said.  "Is 
that  what  you  have  been  wanting  all  the 
time?" 

Her  voice  was  rather  low,  but  most  clear, 
and  it  had  no  reproach. 

"Yes.    What  can  you  say  to  me?" 

"I  can  only  say  how  grateful  it  makes 


me.' 


196 


MARIQUITA 

Her  words  almost  astonished  him. 
Though  he  might  have  known  that  she 
must  say  only  exactly  what  was  in  her  mind. 
They  conveyed  in  themselves  no  refusal, 
but  he  knew  at  once  there  was  no  hope  for 
him  in  them. 

"Grateful!"  He  exclaimed.  "As  if  I 
could  help  it!" 

"And  as  if  I  could  help  being  grateful. 
It  is  so  great  a  thing!  For  you  to  wish  that. 
There  could  be  nothing  greater.  I  can 
never  forget  it.  You  must  never  think  that 
I  could  forget  it  ...  I — you  know, 
Mr.  Gore,  that  I  am  not  like  most  girls, 
being  so  very  ignorant.  I  have  never  read 
a  novel.  Even  the  nuns  told  me  that  some 
of  them  are  beautiful  and  not  bad  at  all,  but 
the  contrary.  Only,  I  have  never  read  any. 
I  know  they  are  full  of  this  matter — love 
and  marriage.  They  are  great  things,  and 
concern  nearly  all  the  men  and  women  in 
the  world,  but  not  quite  all.  I  do  not  think 
I  ever  said  to  myself,  'They  don't  concern 
you!  I  do  not  think  I  ever  thought  about 
it,  but  if  I  had,  I  believe  I  should  have 
known  that  that  matter  would  never  con- 


MARIQUITA 

cern  me.  Yet  I  do  not  want  you  to  mis- 
understand— Oh,  if  I  could  make  you  un- 
derstand, please!  I  know  that  it  is  a  great 
thing,  love  and  marriage,  God's  way  for 
most  men  and  women.  And  I  think  it  a 
wonderful,  great  thing  that  a  man  should 
wish  that  for  himself  and  me ;  should  think 
that  with  me  he  could  be  happier  than  in 
any  other  way.  Of  course,  I  never  thought 
anyone  would  feel  that.  It  is  a  thing  to 
thank  you  for,  and  always  I  shall  thank 
you  .  .  ." 

"Is  it  impossible?" 

She  paused  an  infinitesimal  moment  and 
said: 

"Just  that.   Impossible." 

"Would  it  be  fair  to  ask  why  'impos- 
sible'?" 

"Not  unfair  at  all.  But  perhaps  I  cannot 
answer.  I  will  try  to  answer.  When  you 
told  me  what  you  wanted  it  pleased  me 
because  you  wanted  it,  and  it  hurt  me  be- 
cause I  (who  had  never  thought  about  it 
before)  knew  at  once  that  it  was  not  pos- 
sible to  do  what  you  wanted,  and  I  would 
so  much  rather  be  able  to  please  you." 


MARIQUITA 

"You  will  never  be  able  to  do  anything 
else  but  please  me.  Your  refusing  cannot 
change  your  being  yourself." 

Gore  could  not  worry  her  with  demands 
for  reasons.  He  knew  there  was  no  one 
else.  He  knew  she  was  not  incapable  of 
loving — for  he  knew,  better  than  ever,  that 
she  loved  greatly  and  deeply  all  whom  she 
knew.  Nay,  he  knew  that  she  loved  him, 
among  them,  but  more  than  any  of  them. 
And  yet  he  saw  that  she  was  simply  right. 
What  he  had  asked  was  "impossible,  just 
that."  Better  than  himself  she  would  love 
no  one,  and  in  the  fashion  of  a  wife  she 
would  love  no  one,  ever. 

Yet,  he  asked  her  a  question,  not  to  harry 
her  but  because  of  her  father.  "Perhaps 
you  have  resolved  never  to  marry,"  he  said. 

"I  never  thought  of  it.  But,  as  soon  as  I 
knew  what  you  were  saying,  I  knew  I 
should  never  marry  anyone.  It  was  not  a 
resolution.  It  was  just  a  certainty.  Alas! 
our  resolutions  are  not  certainties." 

"But,"  Gore  said  gently,  feeling  it  nec- 
essary to  prepare  her,  "your  father  may 
wish  you  to  marry." 

199 


MARIQUITA 

She  paused,  dubiously,  and  her  brown 
skin  reddened  a  little. 

"You  think  so?  Yes,  he  may,"  she 
answered  in  a  troubled  voice ;  for  she  feared 
her  father,  more  even  than  she  was  con- 
scious of. 

"I  think  he  does,"  Gore  said,  not  watch- 
ing the  poor  girPs  troubled  face. 

"He  wants  me  to  marry  you?"  she  in- 
quired anxiously. 

"I  am  afraid  so;  ever  since  he  made  up 
his  mind.  I  do  not  think  he  liked  the  idea 
of  letting  you  marry  me  till  long  after  he 
saw  what  I  hoped  for.  You  see,  I  began  to 
hope  for  it  from  the  very  first — from  the 
day  when  we  first  met,  by  the  river.  He 
did  not  like  me  then;  he  did  not  know 
whether  to  approve  of  me  or  not.  And  at 
first  he  was  inclined  to  approve  all  the  less 
because  he  saw  I  wanted  to  win  you  for 
myself.  I  don't  know  that  he  likes  me  much 
even  now;  but  he  approves,  and  he  approves 
of  my  plan.  You  know  that  once  he  has 
made  up  his  mind  to  approve  a  plan,  he 
likes  it  more  and  more.  He  gets  deter- 
mined and  obstinate  about  it." 

200 


MARIQUITA 

"Yes.    He  will  be  angry." 

"I  am  afraid  so.  But — it  is  because  he 
thinks  it  a  father's  duty  to  arrange  for  his 
daughter's  future,  and  this  plan  suited 
him." 

"Oh,  yes!  I  know  he  is  a  good  man.  He 
will  feel  he  is  right  in  being  angry." 

"But  I  don't.  He  will  be  wrong. 
Though  he  is  your  father,  he  has  not  the 
right  to  try  and  force  you  to  do  what  you 
say  is  impossible." 

"Yes,"  she  said  gently,  "it  is  impossible. 
But  I  shall  not  be  able  to  make  him  see 
that." 

"I  see  it.  And  it  concerns  me  more  than 
it  concerns  him." 

"You  are  more  kind  than  anyone  I  ever 
heard  of,"  she  told  him.  "I  never  dared  to 
hope  you  would  come  to  see  that — that  it  is 
impossible." 

"Can  you  tell  him  why?" 

"Perhaps  I  do  not  quite  understand  you." 

"It  seems  a  long  time  ago,  now,  to  me 
since  I  asked  you  if  you  could  come  to  love 
me  and  be  my  wife.  Everything  seems 
changed  and  different.  I  wonder  if  I  could 

201 


MARIQUITA 

guess  why  you  knew  instantly  that  it  was 
impossible.  It  might  help  you  with  your 
father." 

Mariquita  listened,  and  gave  no  prohibi- 
tion. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "you  knew  it  was  im- 
possible, because  my  words  taught  you,  if 
you  did  not  know  already,  that  you  could 
be  no  man's  wife — " 

"Oh,  yes!    That  is  true." 

"But  perhaps  they  taught  you  also  some- 
thing else,  which  you  may  not  have  known 
before — that  you  could  'belong  only  to 
God." 

"I  have  known  that  always,"  she  answered 
simply. 


202 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

WHEN  Don  Joaquin  returned,  he 
was  in  an  unusually  bad  temper, 
and  itwaswell  that  Mariquita  had 
gone  to  bed.  Gore  was  sitting  up,  and,  though 
it  was  long  past  Sarella's  usual  hour,  she  had 
insisted  on  sitting  up  also.  This  was  good- 
natured  of  her,  for  there  was  no  pleasure 
to  be  anticipated  from  the  interview  with 
Don  Joaquin,  and  she  disliked  any  derange- 
ment of  her  habits.  Gore  had  begged  her 
to  retire  at  her  ordinary  hour,  but  she  had 
flatly  refused. 

"I  can  do  more  with  him  than  you  can," 
she  declared,  quite  truly,  "though  no  one 
torill  be  able  to  stop  his  being  as  savage  as 
a  bear.  I'm  sorry  for  Mariquita;  she'll 
have  a  bad  time  to-morrow,  and  it  won't 
end  with  to-morrow." 

Meanwhile  she  took  the  trouble  to  have 
ready  a  good  supper  for  Don  Joaquin,  and 

203 


MARIQUITA 

made  rather  a  special  toilette  in  which  to 
help  him  to  it.  Sarella  was  not  in  the  least 
afraid  of  him,  and  had  no  great  dread  of  a 
row  which  concerned  someone  else.  Don 
Joaquin  was  not,  however,  particularly  mol- 
lified by  the  becoming  dress,  nor  by  finding 
his  betrothed  sitting  up  for  him,  as  she  was 
sitting  up  with  Gore. 

"Where's  Mariquita?"  he  asked,  as  he 
sat  down  to  eat. 

"In  bed  long  ago.  I  hope  you'll  like  that 
chicken ;  it's  done  in  a  special  way  we  have, 
and  the  recipe's  my  patent.  I  haven't 
taught  it  to  Mariquita." 

"Why  aren't  you  in  bed?" 

"Because  I  preferred  waiting  to  see  you 
safe  at  home,"  Sarella  replied  with  an  en- 
trancing smile. 

"Was  Mr.  Gore  anxious  too?"  Don 
Joaquin  demanded  sarcastically. 

"It  is  not  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later  than 
my  usual  time  for  going  to  bed,"  Gore 
answered.  "And  I  thought  it  better  to  see 
you ;  you  would,  I  believe,  have  expected  to 


see  me." 


"Very  well.  You  have  done  as  you  said?" 

204 


MARIQUITA 

"Yes."  Gore  glanced  at  Sarella,  and  Don 
Joaquin  told  her  that  she  had  now  better  sit 
up  no  longer. 

"7  think  I  had,"  she  told  him;  "I  know 
all  about  it." 

"Is  it  all  settled?"  Don  Joaquin  asked, 
looking  at  Gore.  "Have  you  fixed  it  up?" 

Gore  found  this  abruptness  and  haste 
made  his  task  very  difficult. 

He  had  to  consider  how  to  form  his  reply. 

"He  proposed  to  Mariquita,"  Sarella  cut 
in,  "but  she  refused  him." 

"Refused  him!"  Don  Joaquin  almost 
shouted. 

"Unfortunately,  it  is  so,"  Gore  was 
beginning,  but  his  host  interrupted  him. 

"I  do  not  choose  she  should  refuse,"  he 
said  angrily.  "I  will  tell  her  so  before  you 
see  her  in  the  morning." 

Gore  was  angry  himself,  and  rose  from 
his  seat. 

"No,"  he  said;  "I  will  not  agree  to  that. 
She  knows  her  own  mind,  and  it  will  not 
change.  You  must  not  persecute  her  on  my 
account." 

"It  is  not  on  your  account.     I  choose  to 

205 


MARTQUITA 

have   duty  and  obedience   from  my  own 
daughter." 

"Joaquin,"  said  Sarella  (Gore  had  never 
before  heard  her  call  him  by  his  Christian 
name),  "it  is  no  use  taking  it  that  way. 
Mariquita  is  not  undutiful,  and  you  must 
know  it.  But  she  will  not  marry  Mr.  Gore 
— or  anybody." 

"Of  course  she  will  marry,"  cried  the 
poor  girl's  father  fiercely.  "That  is  the 
duty  of  every  girl." 

Sarella  slightly  smiled. 
"Then  many  girls  do  not  do  their  duty," 
she  said,  in  her  even,  unimpassioned  tones. 

Her  elderly  fiance  was  about  to  burst  into 
another  explosion,  but  she  would  not  let 
him. 

"Many  Catholic  girls,"  she  reminded 
him,  "remain  unmarried." 

"To  be  nuns — that  is  different.'* 

"It  is  my  belief,"  she  observed  in  a  de- 
tached manner,  as  if  indulging  in  a  mere 
surmise,  "that  Mariquita  will  be  a  nun." 

"Mariquita!  Has  she  said  so?"  he  de- 
manded sharply. 

206 


MARIQUITA 

"Not  to  me,"  Sarella  replied,  quite  un- 
concernedly. 

uNor  to  me,"  Gore  explained;  "neverthe- 
less, I  believe  it  will  be  so." 

"That  depends  on  me"  the  girl's  father 
asserted  with  an  unpleasant  mixture  of 
annoyance  and  obstinacy.  "I  intend  her  to 
marry." 

"Only  a  Protestant,"  said  Sarella,  with  a 
shrewd  understanding  of  Don  Joaquin  that 
surprised  Gore,  "would  marry  her  if  she 
believes  she  has  a  vocation  to  be  a  nun.  I 
should  think  a  Catholic  man  would  be 
ashamed  to  do  it.  He  would  expect  a  judg- 
ment on  himself  and  his  children." 

Don  Joaquin  was  as  angry  as  ever,  as 
savage  as  ever,  but  he  was  startled.  Both 
his  companions  could  see  this.  Gore  was 
astonished  at  Sarella's  speech,  and  at  her 
acumen.  He  had  wished  to  have  this  inter- 
view with  Mariquita's  father  to  himself,  but 
already  saw  that  Sarella  knew  how  to  con- 
duct it  better  than  he  did.  She  had  clearly 
been  quite  willing  that  "the  old  man"  (as 
he  disrespectfully  called  him  in  his  own 
mind)  should  fly  out  and  give  way  to  his 

207 


MABIQUITA 

fiery  temper  at  once ;  the  more  of  it  went  off 
now,  the  less  would  remain  for  poor  Mari- 
quita  to  endure. 

"If  I  were  a  Catholic  man,"  Sarella  con- 
tinued cooly,  "I  should  think  it  profane  to 
make  a  girl  marry  me  who  had  given  her- 
self to  be  a  nun.  I  expect  the  Lord  would 
punish  it."  She  paused  meditatively,  and 
then  added,  "and  all  who  joined  in  pushing 
her  to  it.  I  know  /  wouldn't  join.  I  think 
folks  have  enough  of  their  own  to  answer 
for,  without  bringing  judgments  down  on 
their  heads  for  things  like  that.  It  won't 
get  me  to  heaven  to  help  in  interfering  be- 
tween Mariquita  and  her  way  of  getting 
there." 

All  the  while  she  spoke,  Sarella  seemed 
to  be  admiring,  with  her  head  turned  on  one 
side,  the  prettiness  of  her  left  wrist  on  which 
was  a  gold  bangle,  with  a  crystal  heart 
dangling  from  it.  Don  Joaquin  had  given 
her  the  bangle,  and  himself  admired  the 
heart  chiefly  because  it  was  crystal  and  not 
of  diamonds. 

"Isn't  it  pretty?"  she  said,  looking  sud- 
denly up  and  catching  his  eye  watching  her. 

208 


MARIQUITA 

"I  thought  you  hadn't  cared  much  for 
it,"  he  answered,  greatly  pleased.  He  had 
always  known  she  would  have  preferred  a 
smaller  heart  if  crusted  with  diamonds. 

Gore  longed  to  laugh.  She  astonished 
and  puzzled  him.  Her  cleverness  was  a 
revelation  to  him,  and  her  good-nature,  her 
subtlety,  and  her  earnestness — for  he  knew 
she  had  been  in  earnest  in  what  she  said 
about  not  daring  to  interfere  with  other 
people's  ways  of  getting  to  heaven. 

"That  old  man  who  instructs  her,"  he 
thought,  "must  have  taught  her  a  lot." 

Of  course,  on  his  own  account,  he  was  no 
more  afraid  of  Don  Joaquin  than  she  was. 
But  he  had  been  terribly  afraid  of  the  hard 
old  man  on  Mariquita's,  and  he  was  deeply 
grateful  to  Sarella. 

"Sir,"  he  said,  "what  she  has  said  to  you 
I  do  feel  myself.  I  am  a  Catholic — and  the 
dearest  of  my  sisters  is  a  nun.  I  should  have 
hated  and  despised  any  man  who  had  tried 
to  spoil  her  life  by  snatching  it  to  himself 
against  her  will.  He  would  have  to  be  a 
wicked  fellow,  and  brutal,  and  impious. 
God's  curse  would  lie  on  him.  So  it  would 

209 


MARIQUITA 

on  me  if  I  did  that  hideous  thing,  though 
God  knows  to-day  has  brought  me  the  great 
disappointment  of  my  life.  Life  can  never 
be  for  me  what  I  have  been  hoping  it  might 
be.  Never." 

Sarella,  listening,  and  knowing  that  the 
two  men  were  looking  at  each  other,  smiled 
at  her  bangle,  and  softly  shook  the  dangling 
heart  to  make  the  crystal  give  as  diamond- 
like  a  glitter  as  possible.  Gore's  life,  she 
thought,  would  come  all  right.  She  had 
done  her  best  valorously  for  Mariquita; 
women,  in  her  theory,  behooved  to  do  their 
best  for  each  other  against  masculine  tyr- 
rany  ("bossishness,"  she  called  it),  but  all 
the  time  she  was  half-savage,  herself,  with 
the  girl  for  not  being  willing  to  be  happy 
in  so  obviously  comfortable  a  way  as  of- 
fered. It  seemed  to  her  "wasteful"  that  so 
pretty  a  girl  should  go  and  be  a  nun;  if  she 
had  been  "homely"  like  Sister  Aquinas  it 
would  have  been  different.  But  Sarella  had 
learned  from  Sister  Aquinas  that  these  mat- 
ters were  above  her,  and  was  quite  content 
to  accept  them  without  understanding  them. 

"Ever  since  I  came  here,"  Gore  was  say- 

210 


MARIQUITA 

ing,  "I  have  lived  in  a  dream  of  what  life 
would  be — if  I  could  join  hers  with  mine. 
It  was  only  a  dream,  and  I  had  to  awake." 

Don  Joaquin  did  not  understand  his 
mind,  but  he  was  able  now  to  see  that  the 
young  man  suffered,  and  had  received  a 
blow  that,  somehow,  would  change  his  life, 
and  turn  its  course  aside. 

"Anything,"  Gore  said,  in  a  very  low, 
almost  thankful  tone,  "is  better  than  it 
would  have  been  if  I  had  changed  my 
dream  for  a  nightmare ;  it  would  have  been 
that,  if  I  had  to  think  of  myself  as  trying  to 
pull  her  down,  from  her  level  to  mine,  of 
her  as  having  been  brought  down.  I  meant 
to  do  her  all  possible  good,  all  my  life  long. 
How  can  I  wish  to  have  done  her  the  great- 
est harm?  As  it  would  have  been  if,  out  of 
fear  or  over-persuasion,  she  had  been 
brought  to  call  herself  my  wife  who  could 
be  no  man's  wife." 

("How  he  loves  her!"  thought  Sarella.) 

("I  doubt  it  has  wrecked  him  a  bit," 
thought  Don  Joaquin.) 


211 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

MARIQUITA  awoke  early  to  see  Sa- 
rella  entering  her  room,  and  it  sur- 
prised her,  for  her  cousin  was  not 
fond  of  leaving  her  bed  betimes. 

"Oh,  I'm  going  back  to  bed  again," 
Sarella  explained.  "We  were  up  to  all 
hours.  Of  course,  your  father  made  a 
rumpus." 

Mariquita  heard  this  with  less  surprise 
than  concern.  It  really  grieved  her  to  dis- 
please him. 

"He  has  very  queer  old-fashioned  no- 
fcions,"  Sarella  remarked,  settling  herself 
comfortably  on  Mariquita's  bed,  "and 
thinks  it's  his  business  to  arrange  all  your 
affairs  for  you.  Besides,  you  know  by  this 
time  that  any  plan  he  has  been  hatching  he 
expects  to  hatch  out,  and  not  to  help  him 
seems  to  him  most  undutiful  and  shocking." 

"But  I  can't  help  him  in  this  plan  of  his," 
Mariquita  pleaded  unhappily. 

212 


MARIQUITA 

"I  suppose  not.  Well,  he  flared  out,  and 
I  was  glad  you  were  in  bed.  Gore  behaved 
very  well.  It's  a  thousand  pities  you  can't 
like  him." 

"But  I  do  like  him.  I  like  him  better 
than  any  man  I  ever  knew." 

"Oh,  yes!  Better  than  the  cowboys  or 
the  old  chaplain  at  Loretto.  That's  no 
good." 

All  this  Sarella  intended  as  medicinal; 
Mariquita,  she  thought,  ought  to  have  some 
of  the  chill  of  the  late  storm.  She  was  not 
entitled  to  immediate  and  complete  relief 
from  suspense.  But  Sarella  was  beginning 
to  feel  a  little  chill  about  the  legs  herself, 
and  did  not  care  to  risk  a  cold,  so  she  ab- 
breviated her  disciplinary  remarks  a  little. 

"I'm  a  good  stepmother,"  she  remarked 
complacently,  "not  at  all  like  one  in  a  novel. 
I  took  your  part." 

"Did  you!"  Mariquita  cried  gratefully; 
"it  was  very,  very  kind  of  you." 

"I  don't  approve  of  men  having  things 
all  their  own  way — whether  fathers  or  hus- 
bands. He  has  been  knocked  under  to  too 
much.  Yes,  I  took  your  part,  and  made  him 

213 


MARIQUITA 

understand  that  if  he  kept  the  row  up  he'd 
have  three  of  us  against  him." 

"What  did  you  say?" 

"All  sorts  of  things.  Never  mind.  Per- 
haps Mr.  Gore  will  tell  you — only  he  won't. 
He  said  a  lot  of  things  too.  We  made  your 
father  think  he  would  be  wicked  if  he  went 
on  bullying  you." 

Of  course,  Mariquita  did  not  understand 
how  this  had  been  effected. 

"He  would  not  do  anything  wicked,"  she 
said;  "he  is  a  very  good  man." 

"He'd  be  a  very  good  mule,"  Sarella 
observed  coolly,  considerably  scandalizing 
Mariquita. 

"You'd  have  found  him  a  pretty  unpleas- 
ant one,  if  Gore  and  I  had  left  you  to 
manage  him  yourself."  Sarella  added,  en- 
tirely unmoved  by  her  cousin's  shocked 
look.  "We  managed  him.  He  won't  beat 
you  now.  But  you'd  better  keep  out  of  his 
way  as  much  as  you  can  for  a  bit.  If  I  were 
you,  I'd  have  a  bad  headache  and  stop  in 
bed." 

"But  I  haven't  a  headache.  I  never  do 
have  headaches." 

214 


MARIQUITA 

Sarella  made  a  queer  face,  and  sighed, 
then  laughed. 

"Anyway,  you're  not  to  be  made  to  marry 
Mr.  Gore,"  she  said. 

Mariquita  looked  enormously  relieved, 
and  began  to  express  her  grateful  sense  of 
Sarella's  good  offices. 

"For  that  matter,"  Sarella  cut  in,  "neither 
will  Mr.  Gore  be  made  to  marry  you — so  if 
you  change  your  mind  it  will  be  no  good. 
He  thinks  it  would  be  wicked  to  marry 
you." 

Mariquita  perfectly  understood  that 
Sarella  was  trying  to  make  her  sorry,  and 
only  gave  a  cheerful  little  laugh. 

"Then,"  she  said,  "I  shall  certainly  not 
ask  him.  It  would  be  quite  useless  to  ask 
him  to  do  anything  wicked." 

"The  fact  is,"  Sarella  told  her,  "that  you 
and  he  ought  to  be  put  in  a  glass  case — two 
glass  cases,  you'd  both  of  you  be  quite 
shocked  at  the  idea  of  being  in  one — and 
labelled.  It's  a  good  thing  you're  unique. 
If  other  lovers  were  like  you  two,  there'd 
be  no  marriages." 

215 


MARIQUITA 

She  got  up,  and  prepared  to  return  to  her 
own  room. 

"Hulloa!"  she  said,  "there's  the  auto. 
Your  father's  going  off  somewhere,  and  you 
can  get  up.  Probably  he  is  taking  Gore 
away." 

"Is  Mr.  Gore  going  away?" 

"He'll  have  to.  There's  no  one  here  for 
him  to  marry  except  Ginger;  but  no  doubt 
you  want  him  to  become  a  monk." 

"A  monk!  He  hasn't  the  least  idea  of 
such  a  thing." 

"Oh,  dear!"  sighed  Sarella,  instantly 
changing  the  sigh  into  a  laugh.  "How 
funny  you  people  are  who  never  condescend 
to  see  a  joke." 

"I  didn't  know,"  Mariquita  confessed 
meekly,  "that  you  had  made  one." 


216 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

DON  JOAQUIN  was  not  yet  recov- 
ered from  his  annoyance.  As  Sa- 
rella  had  perceived,  he  could  not 
easily  condone  the  defective  conduct  of  those 
who,  owing  him  obedience,  refused  to  carry 
out  a  plan  that  he  had  long  been  meditating. 
But  he  had  been  frightened  by  the  picture 
she  had  suggested  of  Divine  judgment,  and 
wondered  if  the  hitches  that  had  occurred 
in  the  issue  of  the  dispensation  for  his  mar- 
riage had  been  a  hint  of  them — a  threaten- 
ing of  what  would  happen  if  he  opposed 
the  Heavenly  Will  concerning  his  daugh- 
ter's vocation.  It  was  chiefly  because  the 
plan  of  her  marriage  had  been  deliberately 
adopted  by  himself,  that  he  was  reluctant  to 
abandon  it.  Her  own  plan  of  becoming  a 
nun  would,  he  gradually  came  to  see,  suit 
him  quite  as  well.  And  presently  he  became 
aware  that,  financially,  it  would  suit  him 

217 


MARIQUITA 

even  better.  If  she  "entered  Religion,"  he 
would  have  to  give  her  a  dowry ;  but  not,  he 
imagined,  a  large  one,  five  thousand  dollars 
or  so,  he  guessed.  Whereas,  if  she  married 
Gore,  he  would  be  expected  to  give  her 
much  more.  Besides,  her  marriage  would 
very  likely  involve  subsequent  gifts  and  ex- 
penditure. It  would  all  come  out  of  what 
he  wished  to  save  for  the  beloved  son  of 
whom  he  was  always  thinking.  As  a  nun, 
too,  Mariquita  would  be  largely  engaged  in 
praying  for  the  soul  of  her  mother,  and  for 
his  own  soul  and  Sarella's  and  her  brother's. 

By  the  time  he  and  Mariquita  met  he  had 
grasped  all  these  advantages,  and,  though 
aloof  and  disapproving  in  his  manner,  he 
did  not  attack  her. 

As  it  pleased  him  to  admire  in  Sarella  a 
delightful  shrewdness  in  affairs,  he  gave  her 
credit  for  favoring  Mariquita's  plan  because 
it  would  leave  more  money  for  her  own 
children.  In  this  he  paid  her  an  undeserved 
compliment,  for  Sarella  did  not  know  in 
the  least  that  Mariquita  would  receive  less 
of  her  father's  money  if  she  became  a  nun 
than  if  she  married  Mr.  Gore.  She  had 

218 


MARIQUITA 

not  thought  of  it,  being  much  of  opinion 
that  Gore  would  ask  for  nothing  in  the  way 
of  dowry  and  that  Don  Joaquin  would  give 
nothing  without  much  asking. 

Don  Joaquin  was  considerably  taken 
aback  to  learn  that  Mariquita  had  formed 
no  definite  plans  yet  as  to  her  "entering 
Religion."  He  had  promptly  decided  that, 
of  course,  she  would  go  back  to  Loretto  as 
a  nun,  and  he  was  proportionally  surprised 
to  find  that  she  had  no  such  idea.  This  sur- 
prise he  expressed,  almost  in  dudgeon,  to 
Sarella.  He  appeared  to  consider  himself 
quite  ill-used  by  such  vagueness;  if  young 
women  wanted  to  be  nuns  it  behooved  them 
to  know  exactly  where  they  meant  to  go, 
and  what  religious  work  they  felt  called  to 
undertake. 

"If  I  were  you,"  Sarella  told  him,  after 
some  hasty  consideration,  "I  would  let  her 
go  to  Loretto — on  a  visit.  You  will  find  she 
makes  up  her  mind  quicker  there — with 
nothing  to  distract  her.  Sister  Aquinas 
talks  of  Retreats — Mariquita  could  make 


one." 


219 


MARIQUITA 

"Who's  to  do  the  work  here  while  she's 
away?"  grumbled  Don  Joaquin. 

"It  will  have  to  be  done  when  she's  gone 
for  good.  We  may  just  as  well  think  it  out." 

Sarella  was  quite  resolved  that  she  would 
never  be  the  slave  Mariquita  had  been,  and 
did  not  mind  having  the  struggle,  if  there 
was  to  be  one,  now. 

"Whether  Mariquita  married  or  became 
a  nun,"  she  went  on,  "she  would  be  gone 
from  here.  Her  place  would  have  to  be 
supplied — more  than  supplied,  for  a  young 
wife  like  me  could  not  do  nearly  so  much 
work.  I  should  have  things  to  do  an  un- 
married girl  has  not,  and  be  unfit  for  much 
work.  I  am  sure  you  understand  that.  Sis- 
ter Aquinas  knows  two  sisters,  very  respect- 
able and  trustworthy,  steady,  and  not  too 
young.  I  meant  to  speak  to  you  about  them. 
They  would  suit  us  as  well.  They  will  not 
separate,  and  for  that  matter,  we  can't  do 
with  less  than  two." 

Sarella's  great  object  was  to  open  the 
matter;  she  intended  to  succeed  but  did  not 
count  on  instant  success,  or  success  without 
a  struggle.  Don  Joaquin  had  to  be  famili- 

220 


MARIQUITA 

arized  with  a  scheme  some  time  before  he 
would  adopt  it.  He  rebelled  at  first  and  for 
that  rebellion  she  punished  him. 

"Mariquita's  position  was  wrong,"  she 
told  him  boldly.  "It  tended  to  make  her 
unlike  other  girls  and  give  her  unusual 
ideas.  She  was  tied  by  the  leg  here,  by  too 
much  work,  and  her  only  rest  or  recreation 
was  solitary  thinking.  If  she  had  been 
taken  about  and  met  her  equals  she  would 
have  been  like  other  girls,  I  expect.  She 
was  a  slave  and  sought  her  freedom  in  the 
skies." 

Don  Joaquin  enjoyed  this  philippic  very 
little;  perhaps  he  only  partly  understood  it, 
but  he  did  understand  that  Sarella  thought 
Mariquita  had  been  put  upon  and  did  not 
intend  being  put  upon  herself.  He  would 
have  been  much  less  influenced  if  he  had 
thought  of  Sarella  as  specially  devoted  to 
his  daughter  or  blindly  fond  of  her,  but  he 
had  always  believed  that  there  was  but  a 
cool  sympathy  between  the  two  girls,  and 
that  Sarella  would  have  found  fault  with 
Mariquita  quite  willingly  if  there  had  been 
fault  to  find, 

221 


MARIQUITA 

"You  have  taken  up  the  cudgels,"  he  said 
sourly,  "very  strongly  for  Mariquita  of 
late." 

"As  time  goes  on  I  naturally  feel  able  to 
speak  more  plainly  than  I  could  when  I 
first  came  here.  I  was  only  your  guest.  It 
is  different  'of  late.'  And  I  am  'taking  up 
the  cudgels'  for  myself  more  than  for 
Mariquita." 

"Oh,  I  quite  see  that,"  he  retorted  with  a 
savage  grin. 

Sarella  determined  to  hit  back,  and  she 
was  by  no  means  restrained  by  scruples  as 
to  "hitting  below  the  belt." 

"Fortunately  for  her,"  she  said,  "Mari- 
quita has  splendid  health,  and  work  did  not 
kill  her.  She  has  the  strength  of  a  horse. 
Her  mother  did  not  leave  it  to  her.  I  have 
always  heard  in  the  family  that  Aunt  Mar- 
garet was  delicate,  physically  unfit  for  hard 
work.  Men  do  not  notice  those  things.  She 
died  too  young,  and  might  have  lived  much 
longer  if  she  had  not  overtaxed  her  strength. 
She  ought  to  have  been  prevented  from 
doing  so  much  work.  You  were  not  too 

222 


MARIQUITA 

poor  to  have  allowed  her  plenty  of  help — 
and  you  are  much  better  off  now." 

Don  Joaquin  almost  jumped  with  horror; 
he  had  really  adored  his  wife,  and  now  he 
was  being  flatly  and  relentlessly  accused  of 
having  perhaps  shortened  her  life  by  lack  of 
consideration  for  her.  And  was  it  true? 
He  could  not  help  remembering  much  to 
Support  the  accusation.  She  had  been  a 
woman  of  feeble  health  and  feeble  temper; 
her  singular  beauty  of  feature  and  coloring 
had  been  in  every  eye  but  Joaquin's  own, 
marred  by  an  expression  of  discontent  and 
complaining,  though  she  had  been  too  much 
in  awe  of  her  masterful  husband  to  set  out 
her  grievances  to  him;  he  guessed  now  that 
she  must  have  written  grumbling  letters  to 
her  relations  far  away  in  the  East.  The 
man  was  no  monster  of  cruelty;  he  was 
merely  stingy  and  money-loving,  hard- 
natured,  and  without  imagination.  Pos- 
sessed of  iron  health  himself,  he  had  never 
conceived  that  the  sort  of  work  his  Indian 
mother  had  submissively  performed  could 
be  beyond  the  strength  of  his  wife.  It  was 
true  that  he  was  much  richer  now  than  he 

223 


MARIQUITA 

had  been  when  he  married,  and  Sarella  had 
herself  accustomed  him  to  the  idea  of 
greater  expenditure,  however  dexterously 
he  might  have  done  his  best  to  neutralize 
those  spendings.  He  was  more  obstinately 
set  upon  marrying  her  than  ever,  because  he 
had  for  a  long  time  now  decided  upon  the 
marriage;  he  was  nervously  afraid  of  her 
drawing  back  if  he  didn't  yield  to  her 
wishes,  the  utterance  of  which  he  took  to  be 
a  sort  of  ultimatum. 

"Are  these  two  women  Catholics?"  he 
demanded,  feeling  sure  that  Sister  Aquinas 
would  only  recommend  such;  "I  will  not 
have  Protestant  servants  in  the  house." 

"They  are  excellent  Catholics,"  Sarella 
assured  him,  "educated  in  the  convent." 

"Then  I  will  consider  the  plan.  You  can 
ask  Sister  Aquinas  about  the  conditions- 
wages,  and  so  forth." 

"What  a  pity,"  thought  Sarella,  when  the 
interview  had  ended,  "that  Mariquita  never 
knew  how  to  manage  him." 


224 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

THERE  was  no  pomp  of  leave-taking 
about  Mariquita's  departure  for  Lo- 
retto.  She  was  only  going  on  a  visit, 
and  would  return. 

"Whatever  you  decide  upon,"  Sarella  in- 
sisted, "you  must  come  back  for  your 
father's  wedding." 

Mariquita  promised,  and  went  away,  her 
father  driving  her  all  the  way  to  Loretto  in 
the  auto.  Her  departure  did  not  move  him 
much,  though  he  would  have  been  better 
pleased,  after  all,  if  she  were  going  away 
to  a  husband's  house.  Sarella,  watching 
them  disappear  in  the  distance,  felt  it  more 
than  the  stoical  old  half-breed. 

"I  shall  miss  her,"  she  said  to  herself;  "I 
like  her  better  than  I  thought  I  should.  She's 
as  straight  as  an  arrow,  and  as  true  as  gold. 
I  suppose  this  watch  is  gold ;  he'd  never  dare 
to  give  me  rolled  gold  .  .  .  Only  nine 

225 


MARIQUITA 

o'clock.  It  will  be  a  long  day,  and  I  shall 
miss  her  all  the  time.  Quiet  as  she  is,  it 
will  make  a  lot  of  difference.  No  one  has 
such  a  nice  way  of  laughing,  when  she  does 
laugh.  I  wonder  if  she  guesses  how  little 
her  father  cares?  He  won't  miss  her  much. 
Some  men  care  never  a  pin  for  a  woman 
unless  they  want  to  marry  her.  He  has  no 
use  for  the  others.  I  expect  it  makes  them 
good  husbands,  though.  Poor  Mariquita! 
I  think  I  should  have  hated  him  if  I  had 
been  her.  It  never  occurred  to  her;  at  first 
I  thought  she  must  be  an  A-Number-One 
hypocrite,  she  seemed  to  think  him  so  ex- 
actly all  that  he  ought  to  be  to  her.  Then  I 
thought  she  must  be  stupid — I  soon  saw  she 
was  as  sincere  as  a  baby.  But  she's  not 
stupid  either.  She's  just  Mariquita;  she 
really  does  see  only  the  things  she  ought  to 
see,  and  it's  queer.  I  never  saw  anyone  else 
that  way.  I  thought  at  first  she  must  be 
jealous  of  me,  the  old  man  put  her  so  com- 
pletely on  one  side,  and  made  such  a  lot  of 
me.  Any  other  girl  would  have  been.  I 
soon  saw  she  wasn't;  it  never  entered  her 
head  that  he  might  leave  me  money  that 

226 


MARIQUITA 

ought  to  be  hers — it  would  have  entered 
mine,  I  know.  But  'she  never  thought  of 
that/  as  she  used  to  say  about  everything." 
Oddly  enough,  it  was  at  this  particular 
recollection  that  a  certain  dewy  brightness 
(that  became  them  well)  glistened  in  Sa- 
rella's  pretty  eyes. 

"Well,"  she  thought,  "I'm  glad  I  can  call 
to  mind  that  I  did  the  best  I  could  for  her. 
It  made  me  feel  just  sick  to  think  of  the  old 
man  brow-beating  and  bullying  her.  I  saw 
a  big  hulking  fellow  beat  his  little  girl  once, 
and  I  felt  just  the  same,  only  I  could  do 
nothing  then  but  scream.  I  was  a  child 
myself,  and  I  did  scream,  and  I  bit  him. 
I'm  glad  I  did  bite  him,  though  I  was 
spanked  for  it.  I  suppose  I'll  have  to  con- 
fess biting  him,  though  I  don't  call  it  a  sin. 
What  on  earth  can  Mariquita  confess?  At 
first  her  goodness  put  my  back  up.  But  I 
wish  she  was  back.  It  never  occurs  to  her 
that  she's  good.  I  soon  found  that  out.  And 
she  thinks  everyone  else  as  good  as  gold. 
She  thinks  all  these  cowboys  good,  and  she 
does  almost  make  them  want  to  be.  It  was 
funny  that  she  didn't  dislike  me.  (7  should 

227 


MARIQUITA 

have  if  I'd  been  in  her  place.)  When  she 
kissed  me  good-bye  and  said  'Sarella,  we'll 
never  forget  each  other,'  it  meant  more  than 
pounds  of  candy-talk  from  another  girl. 
Forget  her!  Not  I.  Will  Gore?  He  will 
never  think  any  other  girl  her  equal.  Mrs. 
Gore  may  make  up  her  mind  to  that.  Per- 
haps he'll  marry  someone  not  half  so  good 
as  himself  and  rather  like  it.  Pfush!  It 
feels  lonesome  now.  I  often  used  to  get  into 
my  own  room  to  get  out  of  Mariquita's  way, 
and  stretch  the  legs  of  my  mind  over  a 
novel.  I  wish  she  was  here  now  .  .  ." 

And  Sarella  did  not  speedily  give  over 
missing  Mariquita.  She  was  a  girl  who  on 
principle  preferred  men's  society  to  that  of 
other  women,  but  in  practice  had  consider- 
able need  of  female  companionship.  She 
liked  to  make  men  admire  her,  but  she  did 
not  much  care  to  be  admired  by  the  cow- 
boys, and  took  it  for  granted  that  they 
already  admired  her  as  much  as  befitted 
their  inferior  position.  She  had  always  been 
too  shrewd  to  try  and  make  other  women 
admire  her,  but  she  liked  talking  to  them 
about  clothes,  which  no  man  understands; 

228 


MARIQUITA 

and,  though  Mariquita  had  been  careless 
about  her  own  sumptuous  affairs,  she  had 
been  a  wonderfully  appreciative  (or  long- 
suffering)  listener  when  Sarella  talked 
about  hers. 

"And  after  all,"  Sarella  confessed,  "she 
had  taste.  My  style  would  not  have  suited 
her*  That  plain  style  of  her  own  was  best 
for  her." 

When  Don  Joaquin  returned  from  Den- 
ver he  seemed  unlike  himself,  almost  sub- 
dued. He  had  been  much  impressed  by 
the  great  convent  and  its  large  community; 
the  nuns  had  made  much  of  him,  and  of 
Mariquita.  They  spoke  in  a  way  that  at 
last  put  it  into  his  head  that  he  had  under- 
valued her;  there  is  nothing  for  awaking 
our  appreciation  of  our  own  near  relations 
like  the  sudden  perception  that  other  people 
think  greatly  of  them.  Gore's  respect  and 
admiration  for  his  daughter  had  not  done 
much,  for  he  had  only  looked  upon  it  as  the 
blind  predilection  of  a  young  man  in  love 
with  a  beautiful  girl.  Several  of  the  nuns, 
including  their  Reverend  Mother,  had 
spoken  to  him  apart,  in  Mariquita's  absence, 

229 


MARIQUITA 

not  immediately  on  his  and  her  arrival,  but 
on  the  evening  of  the  following  day;  on  the 
morrow  he  was  to  depart  on  his  return  to 
the  range,  and  in  these  conversations  the 
Sisters  let  him  plainly  see  that  they  regarded 
the  girl  as  peculiarly  graced  by  God,  and 
of  rarely  high  and  noble  character. 

He  asked  the  Superior  if  she  thought 
Mariquita  would  wish  to  stay  with  them 
and  become  one  of  themselves. 

"No,"  was  the  answer.  "She  is  a  born 
Contemplative.  Every  nun  must  be  a  con- 
templative in  some  degree,  but  I  use  the 
word  in  its  common  sense.  I  mean  that  I 
believe  she  will  find  herself  called  to  an 
Order  of  pure  Contemplatives.  She  will 
make  a  Retreat  here,  and  very  likely  will  be 
shown  during  it  what  is  God's  will  for  her. 

It  surprised  the  kind  and  warm-hearted 
Religious  that  he  did  not  inquire  whether 
that  life  were  not  very  hard.  But  she  took 
charitable  refuge  in  the  supposition  that  he 
knew  so  little  about  one  Order  or  another 
as  to  be  free  from  the  dread  that  his  child 
might  have  a  life  of  great  austerity  before 
her. 

230 


MARIQUITA 

"You  may  be  sure,"  she  said,  in  case  later 
on  any  such  affectionate  misgiving  should 
trouble  him,  "that  she  will  be  happy.  Un- 
seen by  you  or  us  she  will  do  great  things 
for  God  and  His  children.  You  shall  share 
in  it  by  giving  her  to  Him  when  He  calls. 
She  is  your  only  child  ("As  yet,"  thought 
Don  Joaquin,  even  now  more  concerned  fon 
her  brother  than  for  her)  and  God  will 
reward  your  generosity.  He  never  lets 
Himself  be  outstripped  in  that.  For  the 
gift  of  Abraham's  son  He  blest  his  whole 


race.' 


Don  Joaquin  knew  very  little  about 
Abraham,  but  he  understood  that  all  the 
Jews  since  his  time  had  been  notably  suc- 
cessful in  finance. 

It  did  not  cause  him  any  particular  emo- 
tion to  leave  his  daughter.  She  was  being 
left  where  she  liked  to  be,  and  would  doubt-, 
less  be  at  home  among  these  holy  women 
who  seemed  to  think  so  much  of  her,  and  to 
be  so  fond  of  her.  He  had  forgiven  her  for 
wishing  to  be  a  nun  and  thought  highly  of 
himself  for  having  given  his  permission. 

The  nuns  thought  he  concealed  his  feel- 

231 


MARIQUITA 

ings  to  spare  Mariquita's,  and  praised  God 
for  the  unselfishness  of  parents. 

Mariquita  had  never  expected  tenderness 
from  him,  but  she  thought  him  a  good  man 
and  a  good  father,  and  was  very  grateful 
for  his  concession  in  abandoning  his  insist- 
ence on  her  marriage,  and  sanctioning  her 
choice  of  her  own  way  of  life.  And  he  did 
embrace  her  on  parting,  and  bade  God  bless 
her,  reminding  her  that  it  would  be  her 
duty  to  pray  much  for  himself  and  Sarella. 
At  the  range  he  found  a  letter,  which  had 
arrived  late  on  the  day  on  which  he  had  left 
home  with  her,  and  this  letter  he  took  as  a 
proof  that  she  had  prayed  to  some  purpose. 
The  dispensation  was  granted  and  he  could 
now  fix  his  marriage  for  any  date  he  chose. 

"Did  she  send  me  her  love?"  Sarella 
asked,  jealous  of  being  at  all  forgotten. 

"Yes,  twice;  and  when  I  kissed  her  she 
said,  'Kiss  Sarella  for  me.'  Also  she  sent 
you  a  letter." 

Sarella  received  very  few  letters  and  liked 
getting  them.  She  was  rather  curious  to  see 
what  sort  of  letter  Mariquita  would  write, 

232 


MARIQUITA 

and  made  up  her  mind  it  would  be  "nunnish 
and  poky." 

Whether  "nunnish"  or  no,  it  was  not 
"poky,"  but  pleasant,  very  cheerful  and 
bright,  and  very  affectionate.  It  contained 
little  jokish  allusions  to  home  matters,  and 
former  confidential  talks,  and  one  passage 
(much  valued  by  Sarella)  concerning  a 
gown,  retracting  a  former  opinion  and  sub- 
stituting another  backed  by  most  valid  rea- 
sons. "If  those  speckled  hens  go  on  eating 
each  other's  feathers,"  said  the  letter,  "you'll 
have  to  kill  them  and  eat  them.  Once  they 
start  they  never  give  it  up,  and  it  puts  the 
idea  in  the  others'  heads.  Feathers  don't 
suit  everybody,  but  fowls  look  wicked  with- 
out them.  I  hope  poor  old  Jack  doesn't 
miss  me;  give  him  and  Ginger  my  love,  and 
ask  him  to  forgive  me  for  not  marrying 
Mr.  Gore — he  gave  me  a  terrible  lecture 
about  it,  and  Ginger  said,  'Quit  it,  Dad!  I 
knew  she  wouldn't.  I  know  sweethearts 
when  I  see  them — though  I  never  did  see 
one — not  of  my  own.'  I  expect  Larry  Burke 
will  show  her  one  soon,  don't  you,  Sarella? 
It  will  do  very  well;  Larry  will  have  the 

233 


MARIQUITA 

looks  and  Ginger  will  have  the  sense,  and 
teach  him  all  he  needs.  He  has  such  a  good 
heart  he  can  get  on  without  too  much 


sense 


Sarella  liked  her  letter,  and  decided  that 
Mariquita  was  not  lost,  though  removed. 


23* 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

T  SUPPOSE>"  Don  Joaquin  remarked 
in  a  disengaged  manner,  "that,  after 
all  your  preparations,  we  can  fix  the 
day  for  our  wedding  any  time  now." 

Sarella  was  not  in  the  least  taken  in  by 
his  elaborate  air  of  having  been  able,  for  his 
part,  to  have  fixed  a  day  long  ago. 

It  was,  however,  part  of  her  system  to  fall 
in  with  people's  whimsies  when  nothing  was 
to  be  gained  by  opposing  or  exposing  them. 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  agreed,  most  amiably.  "It 
will  take  three  Sundays  to  publish  the  banns 
— any  day  after  that.  Meanwhile  I  should 
be  received.  Sister  Aquinas  says  I  am 
ready.  As  soon  as  we  have  settled  the  exact 
time,  we  must  let  Mariquita  know,  and  you 
can,  when  the  time  comes,  go  over  and  fetch 
her  home." 

Don  Joaquin  consented,  and  Sarella 
thought  she  would  go  and  deliver  Mari- 

235 


MARIQUITA 

quita's  message  to  Jack  and  his  daughter. 
She  found  them  together  and  began  by  say- 
ing, smilingly: 

"I  expect  you  have  known  for  a  long 
while  that  there  was  a  marriage  in  the  air?" 

Old  Jack  had  not  learned  to  like  her,  and 
Ginger  still  disliked  her  smile. 

"I  don't  believe,"  she  said  perversely,  for, 
of  course,  both  she  and  her  father  under- 
stood perfectly,  "that  Miss  Mariquita  is 
going  to  be  married.  She's  not  that  way." 

This  was  a  discouraging  opening,  for  it 
seemed  to  cast  a  sort  of  slur  on  young 
women  who  were  likely  to  be  married. 

"Mr.  Gore's  never  asked  again!"  cried 
Jack. 

"Dad,  don't  you  be  silly,"  Ginger  sug< 
gested;  "everyone  knows  Miss  Mariquit* 
wants  to  be  a  nun." 

"Yes,"  said  Sarella  with  impregnable 
amiability,  "but  we  can't  all  be  nuns.  Miss 
Mariquita  doesn't  seem  to  think  you  likely 
to  be  one.  She  sent  me  back  by  her  father 
such  a  nice  letter.  She  sends  Jack  and  you 
her  love,  and,  though  she  doesn't  send  Larry 
Burke  her  love,  thinking  of  you  evidently 

236 


MARIQUITA 

makes  her  think  of  him." 

Ginger  visibly  relaxed,  and  her  father 
stared  appallingly  with  his  one  eye. 

"Good  Lord!"  quoth  he  in  more  sincere 
than  flattering  astonishment. 

"Well,  he  is  good,"  Ginger  observed 
cooly,  "and  there's  worse  folk  than  Larry 
Burke,  or  me  either." 

"Miss  Mariquita  thinks  it  would  be  such 
a  good  thing  for  him,"  Sarella  reported. 
"So  must  any  one." 

Ginger  felt  that  this,  after  her  unpleas- 
antness to  the  young  lady  who  brought  the 
message,  was  handsome. 

"He  might  do  better,"  she  declared,  "and 
he  might  do  worse." 

"Has  he  said  anything?"  her  father  in- 
quired with  undisguised  incredulity. 

"What  he's  said  is  nothing,"  Ginger 
calmly  replied.  "It's  what  I  think  as  mat- 
ters. He's  no  Cressote,  but  he's  got  a  bit — 
or  ought,  if  he  hasn't  spent  it.  I'd  keep  his 
money  together  for  him,  and  he'd  soon  find 
it  a  saving.  And  I  could  do  with  him — for 
if  his  head's  soft  so's  his  heart.  I  think, 
Dad,"  she  concluded,  willing  "to  take  it 

237 


MARIQUITA 

out"  of  her  father  for  his  unflattering  in- 
credulity, "you  may  as  well,  when  Miss 
Sarella's  gone,  tell  him  to  step  round.  I'll 
soon  fix  it." 

"I  couldn't  do  that,"  Jack  expostulated. 

"Why  not?"  Ginger  demanded  with  fell 
determination. 

"I  really  don't  see  why  you  shouldn't," 
Sarella  protested,  much  amused  though  not 
betraying  it.  "It's  all  for  his  good,"  she 
added  seriously. 

Jack  was  shaken,  but  not  yet  disposed  to 
obedience. 

"Larry,"  Sarella  urged,  "won't  be  so 
much  surprised  as  you  think.  Miss  Mari- 
quita,  you  see,  wants  him  and  Ginger  to 
make  a  match  of  it — " 

"But  does  he?"  Jack  pleaded,  moved  by 
Mariquita's  opinion,  but  not  so  sure  it 
would  reduce  Larry  to  subjection. 

"Tut!"  said  Ginger  impatiently.  "What's 
he  to  do  with  it?  If  he  don't  know  what's 
best  for  him,  I  do.  So  does  Miss  Sarella.  So 
does  Miss  Mariquita." 

"And,"  Sarella  added,  "you  may  be  sure 
Miss  Mariquita  would  never  have  said  a 

238 


MARIQUITA 

word  about  it  if  she  hadn't  felt  pretty  sure 
it  was  to  come  off.  She's  never  been  one  to 
be  planning  marriages.  Why,  Larry  must 
have  made  it  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff  that  he 
was  ready,  or  she  would  never  have 
guessed  it." 

The  weight  of  this  argument  left  Jack 
defenseless. 

"Hadn't  you  better  wait,  Ginger,"  he 
attempted  to  argue  with  shallow  subtlety; 
"he's  like  enough  to  step  round  after  sup- 
per. Then  I'd  clear,  and  you  could  say 
when  you  liked." 

"No,"  Ginger  decided,  "I'm  tired  of  him 
stepping  round  after  supper,  just  to  chatter. 
He'd  be  prepared  if  you  told  him  I'd  said 
he  was  to  come.  He'd  know  something  was 
wanted.  In  fact,  you'd  better  tell  him." 

"Tell  him?    Me?    Tell  him  what?" 
"Just  that  I'd  made  up  my  mind  to  say 

'yes'  if  he'd  a  question  to  ask  me." 

"Why,"  cried  Jack,  aghast,  "he'd  get  on 

his  horse  and  scoot." 

"Not  far,"  Ginger  opined,  entirely  un- 
moved. "He'd  ride  back.  He's  not  pluck 

239 


MARIQUITA 

enough  to  be  such  a  coward  as  to  scoot  for 
good.  Just  you  try." 

The  two  women  drove  the  battered  old 
fellow  off,  Ginger  laughed  and  said: 

"Aren't  men  helpless?" 

Sarella  was  full  of  admiration  of  her 
prowess. 

"Well,  you're  not,"  she  said. 

"Not  me.  But,  Dad  won't  find  Larry  as 
much  surprised  as  he  thinks.  It's  been  in 
the  silly  chap's  head  (or  where  folks  keep 
their  ideas  that  have  no  head)  this  three 
weeks.  /  saw,  though  he  never  said  a  lot — " 

Overpowered  by  curiosity,  Sarella  asked 
boldly  what  he  did  say. 

"Oh,  just  rubbish,"  Ginger  answered 
laughing;  "you're  as  clean  as  a  tablet  of 
scented  soap,  anyway,"  says  he,  first.  Then 
he  said,  "Ginger,  I've  known  pretty  girls 
with  hair  not  near  so  nice  as  yours — not  a 
quarter  so  much  of  it."  Another  time  he 
asked  if  I  kept  a  tooth-brush.  "I  thought 
so,"  says  he,  quite  loving;  "your  teeth's  as 
white  as  nuts  with  the  brown  skin  off,  and 
as  regular  as  a  row  of  tombstones  in  an 
undertaker's  window.  I  never  did  mind 

240 


MARIQUITA 

freckles  as  true  as  I  stand  here  .  .  ."  and 
stuff  like  that.  But  the  strongest  ever  he 
said  was,  "Pastry!  What's  pastry  when  a 
woman  don't  know  how  to  make  it.  I'd  as 
soon  eat  second-hand  toast.  Yours,  Ginger, 
is  like  what  the  angels  make,  /  should  say, 
at  Thanksgiving  for  the  little  angels.' 

"Did  he,  really!"  said  Sarella,  feeling 
quite  sure  that  Larry  would  not  "scoot." 

"I  told  him,"  Ginger  explained  calmly, 
that  if  he  didn't  quit  such  senseless  talk  he'd 
never  get  any  more  of  my  pastry.  He  looked 
so  down  that  I  gave  him  a  slice  of  pumpkin 
pie  when  he  was  leaving.  "The  pastry," 
says  I,  "will  mind  you  of  me,  and  the  pump- 
kin of  yourself."  But  he  got  his  own  back, 
for  he  just  grinned  and  said,  "Yes,  I'll  think 
o'  them  together,  Ginger,  for  the  pie  and  the 
pumpkin  belongs  together,  don't  they?" 

Sarella  laughed  and  expressed  her  belief 
that  after  all  Jack's  embassy  was  rather 
superfluous. 

"Maybe  so.  But  I  knew  he'd  hate  it,  and 
he  deserved  it  for  seeming  so  unbelieving. 
If  my  mother  had  been  lovely  I'd  have  been 
born  plain ;  it's  not  him  as  should  think  me 

241 


MARIQUITA 

too  ugly  for  any  young  fellow  to  fancy,  ffi 
daresay  I  shouldn't  have  decided  to  take 
Larry  if  Miss  Mariquita  hadn't  sent  that 
message.  I  was  afraid  she'd  think  me  a 
fool.  Here's  Larry  coming  round  the  cor- 
ner, looking  as  if  he'd  been  stealing  his 
mother's  sugar." 

"He's  only  thinking  of  your  pastry,"  said 
Sarella.  "I'll  slip  off.  May  I  be  told  when 
it's  all  settled?" 

"Yes,  certainly,  Miss  Sarella,  and  I'm 
sure  I  wish  all  that's  best  to  the  Boss  and 
yourself.  It's  not  everyone  could  manage 
him,  but  you  will.  Poor  Miss  Mariquita 
never  could.  She  was  too  good." 

With  these  mixed  compliments  Sarella 
had  to  content  herself. 


242 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

WHEN   she   answered   Mariquita's 
letter  she  was  to  report  not  only 
the  judicial  end  of  the  plumiver- 
ous  and  specked  hens,  but  the  betrothal  of 
Larry  Burke  and  Ginger.    "Nothing,"  she 
wrote,  "but  his  dread  of  your  displeasure 
could  have  overcome  his  dread  of  what  the 
other  cowboys  would  say  on  hearing  of  his 
proposing.  After  all,  he  has  more  sense  than 
some  sharp  fellows  who  follow  at  last  the 
advice  they  know  is  worth  least.    .    .    ." 
In  her  next  letter  Sarella  said: 
"I  am  to  be  made  a  Catholic  on  Monday 
next;  so  when  you're  saying  your  prayers 
(and  that's  all  day)  you  can  be  thinking  of 
me.    Perhaps  I  gave  in  to  it  first  to  satisfy 
your  father;  but  even  then  I  thought  'if  it 
makes  me  a  bit  more  like  Mariquita  he'll 
get  a  better  bargain  in  me.'     I  shan't  ever 
be  at  all  like  you,  but  I  shall  be  of  the  same 
Religion  as  you,  and  I  know  by  this  time 

243 


MARIQUITA 

that  it  will  do  me  good.  It's  all  a  bit  too  big 
for  me  to  understand,  but  I  like  what  I  do 
understand,  and  Sister  Aquinas  says  I  shall 
grow  into  it.  Clothes,  she  says,  fit  better 
when  they're  worn  a  bit,  and  sit  easier.  She 
says,  'It  has  changed  you,  my  dear  child, 
already;  you  are  gentler,  and  kinder.'  She 
said  another  thing,  'Your  husband  has  been 
a  Catholic  all  his  life,  but  you  will  gradu- 
ally make  him  a  better  one.  He  is  a  very 
sensible  man,  and  he  can't  see  you  learning 
to  be  a  Catholic  and  not  want  to  learn  what 
it  really  means  himself.  He  is  too  honest.' 
She  likes  your  father  a  lot,  and  never  both- 
ers him.  'I  know,'  she  said,  'you  will  not 
bother  him  either.  Some  earnest  Catholics 
do  bother  their  men-folks  terribly  about 
religious  things — and  for  all  the  good  they 
seem  to  do,  might  be  only  half  as  earnest  and 
have  a  better  effect.'  I  make  my  First  Com- 
munion the  day  after  I'm  received.  And, 
Mariquita,  my  dear,  we  are  to  be  married 
that  day  week.  Your  father  will  fetch  you 
home,  and  mind,  mind,  you  come.  I  should 
never  forgive  you  if  you  didn't.  Shall  I 
have  Ginger  for  a  bridesmaid?  I  know 


MARIQUITA 

some  brides  do  choose  ugly  ones  to  make 
themselves  look  better.  The  cowboys  (this 
is  a  dead  secret  told  me  by  Ginger)  have 
subscribed  to  give  us  a  wedding-present.  I 
hope  it  won't  be  one  of  those  clocks  like 
black-marble  monuments  with  a  round  gilt 
eye  in  it.  I  expect  the  cowboys  laugh  at 
both  these  marriages.  But  they  rather  like 
them.  They  make  a  lark,  and  they  never 
do  dislike  anything  they  can  laugh  at.  They 
certainly  all  look  twice  as  amiably  at  me 
when  we  meet  about  the  place  since  they 
knew  I  was  going  to  be  married.  And 
Ginger  finds  them  so  friendly  and  pleasant 
I  expect  she  thinks  she  might,  if  she  had 
liked,  have  married  the  lot.  But  that's  dif- 
ferent. I  daresay  you  notice  that  I  write 
more  cheerfully,  now  it  is  settled.  Yes,  I  do. 
I  like  him  a  great  deal  more  than  at  first. 
It  began  when  he  gave  in  about  what  you 
wanted.  I  really  believe  I  shall  make  him 
happy — and  I  fancy  I  think  of  that  more — I 
mean  less  of  his  making  me  happy.  And, 
Mariquita,  it  is  good  of  me  to  have  wanted 
you  to  be  let  alone  to  be  a  nun  if  you  thought 
it  right,  because,  oh  dear,  how  I  should  like 

245 


MARIQUITA 

you  to  be  living  near  or  at  the  next  range! 
Before  I  got  to  know  you,  it  was  just  the 
opposite.  I  hoped  you'd  get  a  husband  of 
your  own  and  quit;  I  did.  I  thought  you'd 
hate  your  father  marrying  again,  and  (if 
you  stayed  on  here)  would  be  looking  dis- 
approval all  day  long,  and  perhaps  I 
thought  you  would  not  be  best  pleased  at 
not  getting  all  his  money  when  he  died.  (I 
think  when  people  go  to  Confession  they 
ought  to  confess  things  like  that.  Do  they?) 
Oh,  Mariquita,  you  will  be  missed.  But 
I'd  rather  miss  you,  and  know  you  were 
being  what  you  felt  yourself  called  away 
to,  than  think  I  had  helped  to  have  you  in- 
terfered with.  .  .  ." 

Mariquita,  reading  Sarella's  letter,  felt 
something  new  in  her  life,  something 
strangely  moving,  that  filled  her  eyes  and 
heart  with  something  also  new — happy 
tears.  The  free  gift  of  tenderness  came 
newly  to  her;  and,  it  may  be,  she  had  least 
of  all  looked  for  it  from  Sarella. 

"  'Do  people,7  she  quoted  to  herself  from 
Sarella  herself,  'confess  these  things?/  I 
will,  anyway." 

246 


MARIQUITA 

It  hurt  her  to  think  that  she  who  so  loved 
justice  and  charity,  must  have  been  both 
uncharitable  and  unjust. 

But  can  we  agree?  Had  not  Sarella's 
unforeseen  tenderness  been  her  own  gift  to 
her?  Had  Sarella  brought  tenderness  with 
her  from  the  East? 

At  the  stranger's  first  coming  Mariquita 
had  not  judged  but  felt  her,  and  her  feeling 
(of  which  she  herself  knew  very  little)  had 
been  instinctively  correct  while  it  lasted. 


247 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

OF  course  Mariquita  kept  her  promise 
of  being  present  at  her  father's  mar- 
riage. It  had  never  occurred  to  her 
that  she  could  be  absent;  it  was  a  duty  of 
respect  that  she  owed  to  him,  and  a  duty  of 
fellow-womanhood  that  she  owed  to  Sarella. 

It  amused  her  a  little  to  hear  that  a  cer- 
tain Mrs.  Kane  was  to  be  present,  in  a  sort 
of  maternal  quality,  and  that  Mr.  Kane  was 
to  give  the  bride  away  as  a  sort  of  official 
father.  Mr.  Kane  might  have  seen  Sarella 
a  dozen  times — in  the  parlor  of  the  convent, 
which  she  was  much  given  to  frequent. 
Mrs.  Kane  had,  so  far  as  Mariquita  was 
aware,  never  seen  her  at  all — except  at 
Mass. 

They  were  Kentuckians  who  had  moved 
west  some  twelve  years  earlier  than  Sarella 
herself,  and,  though  they  had  not  made  a 
fortune,  were  sufficiently  well  off  to  be 

248 


MARIQUITA 

rather  leading  members  of  the  congregation. 
Mrs.  Kane's  most  outstanding  characteristic 
was  a  genius  for  organizing  bazaars,  on  a 
scale  of  ever-increasing  importance;  the 
first  had  been  for  the  purchase  of  a  har- 
monium, the  last  had  been  to  raise  funds  for 
a  new  wing  to  the  Convent;  all  her  friends 
had  prophesied  failure  for  the  first;  no  one 
had  dared  predict  anything  but  dazzling 
success  for  the  last.  Mr.  Kane  was  not  less 
remarkable  for  his  phenomenal  success  in 
the  matter  of  whist-drives — and  raffles.  He 
would  raffle  the  nose  off  your  face  if  you 
would  let  him,  and  hand  over  an  astonish- 
ing sum  to  the  church  when  he  had  done  it, 
with  the  most  exquisite  satisfaction  that  the 
proceeding  was  not  strictly  legal. 

Both  the  Kanes  were  extremely  amusing, 
and  no  one  could  decide  which  was  the  more 
good-natured  of  the  two.  Of  week-day 
afternoons  Mrs.  Kane  was  quite  sumptu- 
ously attired,  Mr.  Kane  liked  to  be  rather 
shabby  even  on  Sundays  at  Mass,  which 
caused  him  to  be  generally  reported  some- 
what more  affluent  than  he  really  was.  He 
had  always  been  supposed  to  be  "about 

249 


MARIQUITA 

fifty,"  whereas  Mrs.  Kane  had,  ever  since 
her  arrival,  spoken  of  herself  as  "on  the 
sensible  side  of  thirty." 

At  Sarella's  wedding  Mrs.  Kane's  mag- 
nificence deeply  impressed  the  cowboys; 
and  Mr.  Kane's  elaborate  paternity  towards 
the  bride,  whom  he  only  knew  by  her  dress, 
would  have  deceived  if  it  had  been  possible 
the  very  elect;  they  were  not  precisely  that 
and  it  did  not  deceive,  though  it  hugely 
delighted  them. 

"I  swear  he's  crying!"  whispered  Pete 
Rugger  to  Larry  Burke.  "He  cried  just  like 
that  in  the  play  when  Mrs.  Hooger  ran 
away  with  her  own  husband  that  represented 
the  hero." 

"Well,"  said  Larry,  "a  man  can't  help 
his  feelings." 

He  was  secretly  wondering  if  Mr.  Kane 
would  give  away  Ginger — he  would  do  it 
so  much  better  than  Jack. 

Mrs.  Kane  affected  no  tears.  She  had  the 
air  of  serenely  parting  with  a  daughter,  for 
her  own  good,  to  an  excellent,  wealthy  hus- 
band whom  she  had  found  for  her,  and  of 
being  ready  to  do  as  much  for  the  rest  of 

250 


MARIQUITA 

her  many  daughters — Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kane 
were  childless. 

Perhaps  this  attitude  on  her  part  suited 
better  with  her  resplendent  costume  than  it 
would  have  suited  her  husband's  black 
attire — which  he  kept  for  funerals. 

Little  was  lost  on  the  cowboys,  and  they 
did  not  fail  to  note  that  the  gray  which  of 
recent  years  had  been  invading  the  "Boss's" 
hair  had  disappeared. 

"In  the  distance  he  don't  look  a  lot  older 
than  Gore,"  Pete  Rugger  declared  to  his 
neighbor. 

Gore  supported  Don  Joaquin  as  "best" 
or  groomsman. 

It  was  significant  that  on  Mariquita's  ap- 
pearance no  spoken  comment  was  made  by 
any  of  the  cowboys,  though  to  each  of  them 
she  was  the  most  absorbing  figure.  Her 
father  had  fetched  her  from  Loretto  three 
days  before  the  wedding,  and  at  the  Con- 
vent had  been  introduced  to  a  learned-look- 
ing but  agreeable  ecclesiastic  who  was  a 
rector  of  a  college  for  lay  youths. 

Don  Joaquin,  much  interested,  had  plied 
the  reverend  pundit  with  inquiries  con- 

251 


MARIQUITA 

earning  this  seat  of  learning,  not  forgetting 
particular  inquisition  as  to  the  terms. 

On  their  conclusion  he  took  notes  in  writ- 
ing of  all  the  replies  and  declared  that  it 
sounded  exactly  what  he  would  choose  for 
his  own  son. 

"I  would  like,"  he  said,  with  a  simplicity 
that  rather  touched  the  rector,  "that  my  lad 
should  grow  up  with  more  education  than 
I  ever  had." 

"Your  son,"  surmised  the  rector,  "would 
be  younger  than  his  sister?" 

"He  would,"  Don  Joaquin  admitted, 
without  condescending  upon  particulars. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

WHEN  Gore  next  saw  Mariquita  in 
public  she  herself  was  dressed  as 
a  bride.  It  was  a  little  more  than  a 
year  later.  After  her  return  to  Loretto  she 
remained  there  about  three  weeks,  at  the 
end  of  which  she  went  home  to  the  range 
for  a  week.  Her  parents  (as  Don  Joaquin 
insisted  on  describing  himself  and  Sarella) 
had  returned  from  their  wedding  trip,  and 
she  could  see  that  the  marriage  was  a  suc- 
cess. The  two  new  servants  were  installed, 
and  Ginger  was  now  Mrs.  Lawrence  Burke 
and  absent  on  her  wedding  journey. 

Mariquita's  father  made  more  of  her 
than  of  old,  and  inwardly  resolved  to  make 
up  to  "her  brother"  for  any  shortcomings 
there  might  have  been  in  her  case. 

Sarella  was  unfeignedly  glad  to  have  her 
at  home,  and  looked  forward  sadly  to  her 
final  departure.  Of  one  thing  she  was  re- 

2S3 


MARIQUITA 

solved — that  Mariquita  should  be  taken  all 
the  way  to  her  "Carmel"  in  California  by 
both  "her  parents."  And,  of  course,  she  got 
her  own  way. 

The  extreme  beauty  of  the  Convent  and 
its  surroundings,  the  glory  of  the  climate, 
the  brilliance  of  its  light,  the  splendor  of 
the  blue  and  gold  of  sky  and  hills,  half 
blinded  Sarella  to  the  rigor  of  the  life  Mari- 
quita was  entering — till  the  moment  of 
actual  farewell  came.  Then  her  tears  fell, 
far  more  plentifully  than  Mr.  Kane's  at  her 
own  wedding. 

Still  she  admitted  that  the  nuns  were  as 
cheerful  as  the  sky,  and  wondered  if  she 
had  ever  heard  more  happy  laughter  than 
theirs  as  they  sat  on  the  floor,  with  Mari- 
quita in  their  midst,  behind  the  grille  in  the 
"speak-room."  As  a  postulant  Mariquita 
did  not  wear  the  habit,  but  only  a  sort  of 
cloak  over  her  own  dress ;  her  glorious  hair 
was  not  yet  cut  off. 

Don  Joaquin  did  not  see  the  nuns,  as  did 
Sarella,  with  the  curtains  of  the  grille 
drawn  back.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  big 
spikes  of  the  grille  were  turned  the  wrong 

254 


MARIQUITA 

way,  for  he  could  not  imagine  anyone  desir- 
ing to  get  forcibly  in.  He  watched  every- 
thing, fully  content  to  take  all  for  granted 
as  the  regulation  and  proper  thing,  without 
particularly  understanding  any  of  it.  It 
gave  him  considerable  satisfaction  to  hear 
that  Saint  Theresa  was  a  Spaniard,  and  he 
thought  it  sensible  of  Mariquita  to  join  a 
Spanish  order.  He  had  no  misgivings  as 
to  her  finding  the  life  hard — he  did  not 
know  in  the  least  what  the  life  was,  and 
made  no  inquisition ;  he  had  a  general  idea 
that  women  did  not  feel  fastings  and  so 
forth.  He  would  have  felt  it  very  much 
himself  if  he  had  had  to  rise  with  the  dawn 
and  go  fasting  till  midday,  instead  of  begin- 
ning the  day  with  a  huge  meal  of  meat. 

The  old  life  at  the  range,  as  it  had  been 
when  Sarella  first  came,  was  never  resumed. 
She  was  determined  that  its  complete  isola- 
tion should  be  changed,  and  she  changed  it 
with  wonderful  rapidity  and  success.  The 
friendly  and  kind-hearted  Kanes  helped  her 
a  great  deal.  They  had  insisted,  at  the  wed- 
ding itself,  that  the  bride  and  bridegroom 
should  pay  them  a  very  early  visit,  after 

255 


MABIQUITA 

their  return  from  their  wedding-journey. 
It  was  paid  immediately  on  their  getting 
back  from  California,  and  it  lasted  several 
days.  During  those  days  their  host  and 
hostess  took  care  that  they  should  meet  all 
the  leading  Catholics  of  the  place,  to  whom 
Sarella  made  herself  pleasant,  administer- 
ing to  them  (in  her  husband's  disconcerted 
presence)  pressing  invitations  to  come  out 
to  the  range:  though  they  all  had  autos  it 
was  not  to  be  expected  that  they  would  come 
so  far  for  a  cup  of  tea,  and  they  came  for  a 
night,  and  often  for  two  or  three  nights. 
Naturally  the  Kanes  came  first  and  they 
spoke  almost  with  solemnity  (as  near  sol- 
emnity as  either  could  attain)  of  social 
duty.  It  was  an  obligation  on  all  Catholics 
to  hang  together,  and  hanging  together  ob- 
viously implied  frequent  mutual  hospitali- 
ties. Don  Joaquin  had  found  that  the  prac- 
tice of  his  religion  did  imply  obligations 
and  duties  never  realized  before,  and  he  was 
a  little  confused  as  to  their  relative  strict- 
ness. On  the  whole,  he  succumbed  to  what 
Sarella  intended,  with  a  compliance  that 
might  have  surprised  Mariquita  had  she 

256 


MARIQUITA 

been  there  to  see.  Some  of  the  cowboys 
were  of  the  opinion  that  the  old  man  was 
breaking.  He  was  only  being  (not  immedi- 
ately) broken  in.  A  man  of  little  over  fifty, 
of  iron  constitution,  does  not  "break,"  how- 
ever old  he  may  appear  to  five- and- twenty 
or  thirty.  The  sign  that  appeared  most 
ominous  to  these  young  men  was  that  "the 
Boss"  betrayed  symptoms  of  less  rigid  stingi- 
ness; there  was  nothing  really  alarming 
about  the  symptoms.  Such  as  they  were 
they  were  due,  not  so  much  to  any  decay  in 
the  patient's  constitution,  as  to  a  little 
awakening  of  conscience  referable,  such  as 
it  was,  to  the  late-begun  practices  of  con- 
fession. Old  Jack  was  made  foreman,  at 
an  increase  of  pay  by  no  means  dazzling, 
but  quite  satisfactory  to  himself,  who  had 
not  expected  any  such  promotion.  Larry 
and  Ginger  settled,  about  two  miles  from 
the  homestead,  in  a  small  house  which  they 
were  permitted  by  Don  Joaquin  to  build. 
Two  of  the  cowboys  found  themselves  wives 
whom  they  had  first  seen  in  church  at 
Sarella's  wedding;  these  young  ladies,  it 
appeared,  had  severally  resolved  that  under 

257 


MARIQUITA 

no  circumstances  would  they  marry  any  but 
Catholics,  and  their  lovers  accepted  the 
position,  largely  on  the  ground  that  a  re- 
ligion good  enough  for  Miss  Mariquita 
would  be  good  enough  for  them. 

"Too  good,"  grimly  observed  one  of  their 
comrades  who  was  not  then  engaged  to 
marry  a  Catholic. 

Don  Joaquin  allowed  the  two  who  were 
married  to  have  a  little  place  built  for  them- 
selves on  the  range.  And  as  the  brides  were 
each  plentifully  provided  with  sisters  it 
seems  likely  that  soon  Don  Joaquin  will  have 
quite  a  numerous  tenantry.  It  also  appears 
probable  that  a  priest  will  presently  be  resi- 
dent at  the  range,  for  one  has  already  en- 
tered into  correspondence  with  Don  Joaquin 
on  the  subject.  Having  recently  recovered 
from  a  "chest  trouble,"  he  has  been  advised 
that  the  air  of  the  high  prairies  holds  out 
the  best  promise  of  continued  life  and  avoid- 
ance of  tuberculosis.  There  is  another 
scheme  afoot  of  which?  perhaps,  Don 
Joaquin  as  yet  knows  nothing.  It  began  in 
the  active  mind  of  Sister  Aquinas,  and  its 
present  stage  consists  of  innumerable  pray- 

258 


MARIQUITA 

ers  on  her  part  that  she  may  be  able  to 
establish  out  on  the  range  a  little  hospital, 
served  by  nuns,  for  the  resuscitation  of 
patients  threatened  with  consumption.  She 
sees  in  the  invalid  priest  a  chaplain  plainly 
provided  as  an  answer  to  prayer;  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Kane,  her  confidants,  see  in,  the  scheme 
immense  occasion  for  unbridled  bazaars  and 
whist  drives.  All  friends  of  Mr.  Kane  meet 
him  on  their  guard,  uncertain  which  of 
their  possessions  he  may  have  it  in  his  eye 
to  raffle.  Even  as  I  write,  I  hear  that  an- 
other answer  to  the  dear  nun's  prayers  looms 
into  sight.  A  widowed  sister  of  her  own, 
wealthly,  childless  and  of  profuse  gener- 
osity, writes  to  her,  and  the  burden  of  her 
Song  is  that  she  would  not  mind  (her  chest 
having  always  been  weak)  going  to  the  pro- 
posed sanatorium  herself,  at  all  events  for  a 
few  years,  and  bringing  with  her  Doctor 
Malone:  Dr.  Malone  is  of  unparalleled 
genius  in  his  profession,  but  tuberculous, 
and  it  is  transparently  plain  that  his  kind 
and  affluent  friend  wishes  to  finance  him  and 
remove  him  to  an  "anti-tuberculous  air." 
It  seems  to  me  certain  that  Sister 

259 


MARIQUITA 

Aquinas's  prayers  will  very  soon  be 
answered,  and  the  sanatorium,  be  a  fact.  She 
has,  I  know,  mentally  christened  it  already, 
"Mariquita"  is  to  be  its  name. 


260 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

MARIQUITA'S  profession  took 
place  fourteen  months  after  her 
father's  second  marriage.  Her 
brother  was  already  an  accomplished  fact; 
he  was,  indeed,  six  weeks  old  and  present 
(not  alone)  on  the  occasion.  He  was  start- 
lingly  like  his  father,  a  circumstance  not 
adverse  to  his  future  comeliness  as  a  man, 
but  which  made  him  a  little  portentous  as 
a  baby.  Don  Joaquin  on  the  day  of  his  birth 
wrote  to  the  rector  of  the  college  whom  he 
had  met  at  Loretto  with  many  additional 
inquiries.  Mariquita  first  beheld  her  brother 
when,  fortunately,  his  father  and  her  own 
was  not  present,  for  she  laughed  terribly  at 
the  great  little  black  creature  with  eyes  and 
nose  at  present  much  too  big.  He  looked 
about  fifty  and  had  all  the  solemnity  of  that 
distant  period  of  his  life. 
"Isn't  he  a  thorough  Spaniard?"  Sarella 

261 


MARIQUITA 

demanded,  pretending  to  pout  discontent- 
edly. But  Mariquita  saw  very  clearly  that 
she  was  as  proud  of  her  baby  as  Don 
Joaquin  himself.  Since  his  birth  Sarella's 
letters  had  been  full  of  him,  and  she  thought 
of  his  clothes  now.  She  had  persuaded  her 
husband,  as  a  thank-offering  for  his  son,  to 
give  a  considerable  piece  of  ground,  in  a 
beautiful  situation,  not  a  mile  from  the 
homestead,  as  the  site  of  the  future  Church, 
Convent,  and  Sanatorium. 


The  beautiful  and  bright  chapel  of  th* 
Carmelite  convent  was  free  of  people;  two 
prie-dieus,  side  by  side,  had  been  placed  at 
the  entrance  of  the  church.  Towards  these 
Mariquita,  dressed  as  a  bride,  walked,  lean- 
ing on  her  father's  arm.  She  had  always 
possessed  the  rare  natural  gift  of  walking 
beautifully.  No  one  in  the  church  had  ever 
seen  a  bride  more  beautiful,  more  radiant, 
or  more  distinguished  by  unlearned  grace 
and  dignity. 

Among  the  congregation,  but  nearest  to 

262 


MARIQUITA 

the  two  prie-dieus,  knelt  Sarella  and  Mr. 
Gore. 

Behind  their  grille  the  nuns  were  singing 
the  ancient  Latin  hymn  of  invocation  to  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

Presently  the  Archbishop  in  noble  words 
set  out  the  Church's  doctrine  and  attitude 
concerning  "Holy  Religion,"  especially  in 
reference  to  the  Orders  called  Contempla- 
tive, for  no  Catholic  Order  of  religion  can 
be  anything  but  contemplative,  in  its  own 
degree  and  fashion.  He  dwelt  upon  the 
thing  called  Vocation,  and  the  vocation  of 
every  human  soul  to  heaven,  each  by  its  own 
road  of  service,  love,  and  obedience;  then 
upon  the  more  exceptional  vocation  of 
some,  whereby  God  calls  them  to  come  to 
Him  by  roads  special  and  less  thronged  by 
travellers  to  the  Golden  Gate ;  pointing  out 
that  the  Church,  unwavering  guardian  of 
Christian  liberty,  in  every  age  insisted  on 
the  freedom  of  such  souls  to  accept  that 
Divine  summons  as  the  rest  are  free  to  go 
to  Him  by  the  ways  of  His  more  ordinary 
and  usual  Providence.  He  spoke  of  the 
Church's  prudence  in  this  as  in  all  else,  and 

263 


MARIQUITA 

of  the  courses  enjoined  by  her  to  enable  a 
sound  judgment  to  be  made  as  to  the  reality 
of  such  exceptional  vocation;  and  so  of 
postulancy,  novitiate,  and  profession. 

His  words  ended,  the  "bride"  and  her 
father  rose  from  their  knees  and  after  (on 
his  part  the  usual  genuflection)  and  on  hers 
a  slow  and  profound  reverence,  they  turned 
and  walked  down  the  church  as  they  had 
come,  she  leaning  upon  his  arm.  After  them 
the  whole  congregation  moved  out  of  the 
chapel,  and  went  behind  them  to  the  high 
wooden  gates  behind  which  was  the  large 
garden  of  the  "enclosure."  Grouped  before 
those  gates  all  waited,  listening  to  the  nuns 
slowly  advancing  towards  them  from  the 
other  side,  out  of  sight,  but  audible,  for  they 
were  singing  as  they  came.  Slowly  the 
heavy  gates  opened  inwards,  and  the  Car- 
melites could  be  seen.  In  front  stood  one 
carrying  a  great  wooden  crucifix.  The  faces 
of  none  of  them  could  be  seen,  for  their 
long  black  veils  hung,  before  and  behind, 
down  to  the  level  of  their  knees,  leaving 
only  a  little  of  the  brown  habit  visible. 

Mariquita    embraced    her    father,    and 

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MARIQUITA 

Sarella  spoke  a  low  word  to  Gore,  who 
stood  on  one  side  of  Sarella,  went  forward 
with  a  low  reverence  towards  the  Crucifix, 
kissed  its  feet,  and  then  turned;  with  a  pro- 
found curtesy  she  greeted  those  who  had 
gathered  to  see  her  entrance  into  Holy  Re- 
ligion, and  took  her  farewell  of  "the 
world,"  the  gates  closed  slowly,  and  among 
her  Sisters  she  went  back  to  the  chapel. 

The  congregation  returned  thither  also. 
Many  were  softly  weeping;  poor  Sarella 
was  crying  bitterly.  Her  husband  was  not 
unmoved,  but  his  grave  dignity  was  not 
broken  by  tears.  Gore  could  not  have 
spoken,  but  there  was  no  occasion  for 
speech. 

Behind  the  nun's  grille  in  the  chapel  the 
little  community  was  gathered,  Mariquita 
among  them,  no  longer  in  her  bride's  dress, 
but  in  the  brown  habit  without  scapular  or 
leathern  belt. 

The  Archbishop  advanced  close  to  the 
grille  and  put  to  her  many  questions.  What 
did  she  ask?  Profession  in  the  order  of  holy 
religion  of  Mount  Carmel.  Was  this  of  her 
own  free  desire?  Yes.  Had  any  coerced  or 

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MARIQUITA 

urged  her  to  it?  No  one.  Did  she  believe 
that  God  Himself  had  called  her  to  it?  Yes. 
And  many  other  questions. 

Then  the  Archbishop  blessed  the  scapu- 
lar, and  it  was  put  upon  her  by  her  Sisters, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  belt.  So  with  each 
article  of  her  nun's  dress,  sandals  and  veil. 

Thereafter,  upon  ashes,  she  lay  upon  the 
ground  covered  by  a  Pall,  and  De  Prof  undis 
was  sung. 

So  the  solemn  rite  proceeded  to  its  end. 
Afterwards  the  new  Religious  sat  in  the 
parlor  of  the  grille,  or  "speak-room,"  and 
the  witnesses  kept  it  full  for  a  long  time,  as 
in  succession  they  went  to  talk  to  her  where 
she  sat  behind  the  grille. 

The  last  of  all  was  Gore.  He  only  went 
in  as  the  last  of  the  groups  came  out. 

"I  was  afraid  you  might  not  come,"  Mari- 
quita  told  him.  "Thank  you  for  coming. 
If  you  had  not  come  J  should  have  been 
afraid  that  you  felt  it  sad.  There  is  nothing 
sad  about  it,  is  there?" 

"Indeed  nothing." 

There  was  something  in  her  voice  that 

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MARIQUITA 

told  him  she  was  gayer  than  of  old,  happy 
she  had  always  been.  Though  she  smiled 
radiantly  she  did  not  laugh  as  she  said: 

"I  know  the  ceremonies  are  rather  har- 
rowing to  the  lookers-on.  (I  heard  some 
one  sob — dear  Sarella,  I'm  afraid.)  But 
not  to  us.  One  is  not  sad  because  one  has 
been  allowed  to  do  the  one  thing  one  wanted 
to  do?  Is  one?" 

"Not  when  it  is  a  great,  good  thing  like 
this." 

"Ah,  how  kind  you  are!  I  always  told 
you  you  were  the  kindest  person  I  had  ever 
met.  Yes  the  thing  is  great  and  good — only 
you  must  help  me  to  do  it  in  God's  own 
way,  in  the  way  He  wishes  it  done.  You 
will  not  get  tired  of  helping,  by  your  pray- 
ers for  me,  will  you?" 

"Of  course  I  never  shall." 

Presently  she  said,  not  laughing  now 
either,  but  with  a  ripple  like  the  laughter 
of  running  water  in  her  voice,  "You  can't 
think  how  I  like  it  all,  how  amusing  some 
of  it  is!  One  has  to  do  'manual  labor' — 
washing  pots  and  pans,  and  cleaning  floors; 
I  believe  it  is  supposed  to  be  a  little  humil- 

267 


MARIQUITA 

iating,  and  meant  to  keep  us  humble.  And 
you  know  how  used  I  am  to  it.  I'm  afraid 
of  its  making  me  conceited—1!  do  it  so  much 
better  than  the  Sisters  who  never  did  any- 
thing like  that  at  home.  Mother  Prioress  is 
always  afraid,  too,  that  I  shan't  eat  enough, 
and  that  I  shall  say  too  many  prayers.  I 
fell  into  a  pond  we  have  in  our  garden,  and 
she  was  terrified,  thinking  I  must  be 
drowned;  no  one  could  drown  in  it  without 
standing  on  her  head.  I  was  trying  to  get  a 
water-lily,  so  I  fell  in  and  came  out  fright- 
fully muddy  and  smelly,  too  .  .  .  You 
must  be  kind  to  Sarella;  she  is  so  good,  and 
has  been  so  good  to  me.  I  shall  never  forget 
what  you  and  she  did  for  me.  Write  to  her 
if  you  go  away,  and  tell  her  all  about 
yourself." 

"What  there  is  to  tell." 

"Oh,  there  will  be  lots.  You  are  not  such 
a  bad  letter-writer  as  that  .  .  ." 

So  they  talked,  the  small,  trivial,  kindly 
talk  that  belongs  to  friendship,  and  showed 
him  that  Mariquita  was  more  Mariquita 
than  ever,  now  she  was  Sister  Consuelo. 
Her  father  liked  the  Spanish  name,  without 

268 


MARIQUITA 

greatly  realizing  its  reference  to  Our  Lady 
of  Good  Counsel. 


THE  END 


PRINTED  BY  BENZIGER  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

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